Amid the many changes that COVID has brought to education, you don’t want your students to feel leery of upcoming testing. You want to make sure that you have a plan in place to make sure that your students can put their best foot forward, but also make sure that they are not stressed out.
The best way to ensure you adequately prepare your students for testing is to plan your desired course of action.
- Determine what you want to cover – What content do you want to cover? Find out what topics/skills will be covered on the test. You can review data from Knowre Math’s Teacher Dashboard to determine what topics you may want to put more emphasis on.
- Set your order – What order do you want to cover those topics/skills? Some teachers like to work backwards, starting with the most recently covered material.
- List what strategies/activities you want to use - Not all strategies are effective for all students. Use strategies that you feel work best for your group of students. Some strategies include: mini-lessons and games. More can be found on Joana’s post on Test Prep Fun on The Not So Wimpy Teacher website.
Here are some ideas to use for test prep:
- Use Knowre Math’s Targeted 10 for formative assessment after reviewing topics or skills
- Make content review fun and engaging
- Teach test-taking strategies
- Partner with parents
- Encourage parents to reinforce test prep at home
- Provide suggestions on how parents can help. You can provide resources such as Scholastic’s article on Preparing Your Child For Testing.
- Communicate student progress
- Brain Breaks
As you navigate the ever-changing environment that COVID has brought, ensure that you are choosing effective ways to prepare your students for testing.