Preparing Students for Standardized Reading Tests
Elementary Grades
Purpose: To acquaint students with the tasks and format of assessments; to make them as comfortable as possible
Materials: Self-constructed practice tests based on reading assignments
Procedure:
- Occasionally use practice tests with a forced choice format. Emphasize that all possible answers or solutions should be read and carefully considered before choosing a response. After the test, discuss all possible answers. Explain the reasoning or have students explain why one answer is better than the others. Discuss how the other responses were eliminated.
- Have students read through the text once before answering questions. Then reread the text as necessary to evaluate possible answers. Remind students that when answering questions, they can look back” at the text as many times as they want.
- Occasionally develop or use practice tests that require more than one correct answer. This format is conceptually similar to a classroom discussion where several answers for a given question are evaluated and for certain questions more than one of the answers is usually acceptable (or correct).
- Caution students to avoid the temptation to stop evaluating choices once they have found one good answer. One strategy that might be helpful in preparing for multiple choice tests is to try to identify the two least plausible responses and mark them “no” before evaluating the remaining ones. This helps encourage students to consider multiple “yes” answers.
