Yikes! State assessments are right around the corner and the funny thing is that we’re not really that nervous. This year more than ever, we feel like we’ve done a great job preparing our students for testing situations through our day-to-day teaching. In the past two years our students have scored almost 100% proficient and advanced on our state tests and we wanted to share some of our secrets as well as secrets from other top teachers.
To help students with constructed response questions, we teach them through using a metaphor of a great constructed response. This free ice cream packet will help your students write complete constructed responses. Be sure to use this model throughout the year and not just right before the test for the most “delicious” results.
To help students write prompts throughout the year we love our community journals. We try hard to stick to a traditional writing workshop model throughout the year and have it found it hard to tie in prompt writing without these journals. Kids write to a different prompt each week and then give each other feedback. Each journal is unique so we always keep our students on their toes! Our teammates love to use these as homework while we prefer to maintain a testing environment during this practice. The possibilities are endless! Download this packet here.
To help our students use math vocabulary effectively, we use the common core words as our word wall. It’s fun to tie in math vocabulary games to keep our students engaged while learning these words. Download this packet here.
We do the same thing for literacy vocabulary! Download this on TpT here.
Finally, our secret to helping students practice literacy skills throughout the week is a week-to-week bulletin board program where students practice ten different skills. These skills get harder and harder each week so our kids are well prepared. We usually do this during word work time as a “must do.” It is available for purchase on TpT here.
Check out more test prep secrets below!
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