**Page under construction and incomplete. Pardon our mess.**
Welcome to the most dreaded unit of all: State Test Preparation! I am a firm believer in the oft-misquoted Sun Tzu's philosophy: "If you know yourself, and you know your enemy, you need not fear the outcome of a thousand battles." Many people think of state test preparation as a "drill and kill" time of year filled with old practice exams and silent work time. In our learning environment, we truly study our enemy before entering the field of battle.
Material |
Description [How We Use It] |
General Information
|
This presentation is how we kick off our state test preparation unit. Honestly, the information contained within is where we do the bulk of the learning about our "enemy." Usually, it is a bit of a wake-up call for students because I share years worth of data tracking and explanations of grading policies as if I'm teaching teachers. Since doing so, I've found that students enter the state test more confident and less apprehensively.
|
Multiple Choice
|
Instead of practicing a million multiple-choice passages, we look at only two, and we look at them rather differently than students are used to. Each question you see has a percentage rating next to it. That's the amount of students state wide that answered the question correctly. Our goal is to out perform the state average. After each assessment we evaluate our own data and see how we stacked up against the state as a whole. Depending on the outcome, we plan an intervention before attempting the second assessment. To date, it has never taken more than one intervention for my students to outperform the state average on the second attempt at a multiple-choice assessment. Maybe one day, we'll need to add a third.
|
Short-Answer Question
|
Honestly, success at short-answer questions (on the state test) is as simple as the directions to the left. I'm not pretending that the directions are a prescription for good writing. They are not. They are, however, an effective way to easily score two out of two points on the state test, short-answer questions.
|
Essay
Four Point Rubric |
This is the four-point rubric used to grade essays on the state test. For more information about rubrics, look at my Grades page.
|