As soon as administrators start talking about ELA state testing dates, your hands may start to tingle. I think of my nephew who proudly told me his reading score first thing when I saw him last fall as a reminder that the kids do care about these, as inequitable as they may or may not feel these days.
With that first announcement, you may wonder, “how will this disrupt the unit I’m teaching next?” Colleagues may begin to give looks that say “they aren’t ready for that yet.” You may immediately start counting headsets broken so far this year to figure out if you’ll have enough left. You will almost certainly begin to feel the struggle of deciding between continuing to teach rich, engaging lessons, or defaulting to rote ELA test prep.
How to Prepare for ELA State Testing
You don’t have to make that choice. Test prep can be fun and engaging. Test prep can continue to build skills not just drill and kill. Test prep can even be used to highlight a theme you want to celebrate in your classroom, like, say, Women’s History Month? These six tips will help you to get your students ready for state ELA testing AND maintain engagement.
1. Offer leveled practice
Our students are going to get different scores on state testing, many of them might even get questions of different difficulties depending on how they’ve done in the past. Why would we give them all the same practice questions? Instead, make sure that students are getting differentiated ELA test practice at a level that is appropriately challenging for them. Test prep is as much about building a mindset as skills, and we want our learners to go into the test expecting to do well with their best effort.
2. Practice Writing
Yes, skills for answering multiple choice questions are important, but we also need to prepare students for the writing task to come. Many of my writers look at me as if I have green gel oozing out of my head when I tell them I expect them to complete an entire writing piece in a sitting earlier in the year, but by testing time most of them are able to do it. Whether your students are or aren’t there yet, give them practice with reading a completely unfamiliar text and then writing about it.
Preparing for the timed writing is a critical ELA test taking strategy to teach. It can be a weekly routine to get them into a rhythm and cut down on your planning. This bundle in my store has a variety of short passages about less common figures and movements in Women’s History with writing responses of different types.
3. Build Routines
Just like you want to get scholars into a routine of writing, use routine to keep planning simple for you and get them comfortable with the testing environment. For some of my students, the hardest part about testing is staying seated and quiet. Hold them to your silent start with do-nows where there’s no room for them to need to ask a question or get bored and off task. This freebie engages students to respond to quotes from powerful Black Women in the same way for six days. Alternate using task cards and other practice materials as silent, seated activities sometimes and fun, move around collaborative practice at other times. n
4. Prepare Students for the State Test Mentally
Ignite confidence and inspire students. Celebrating diverse women as a part of your ELA test prep doesn’t just keep students engaged. Introducing our scholars to everyday women who made a difference, like with these women’s history month test prep task cards, helps them see their own power to change the world. Whether students identify as female or not, seeing figures who were once kids just like them go on to tackle major challenges in the world is inspiring and builds confidence- just like we want them to have going into testing.
5. Cultivate Community with picture books
While you are reviewing comprehension, inferencing, point of view, context clues, figurative language and all of those other ELA state test skills, build a community of students who want each other to succeed. Picture books aren’t just for littles and they aren’t just for SEL lessons.
Picture books offer rich mentor texts for skills practice WHILE building community and celebrating Women’s History Month. Sisters and Champions, Drum Dream Girl, I Dissent and so many other rich biographical picture books are perfect for Women’s History Month and test prep when used as an interactive read aloud and for follow-up activities.
6. Leave Space for Creativity
Finally, in all that building confidence and routine, neither you or your students want to arrive at testing fully burnt out. Make sure to leave space for creativity and joy apart from ELA test prep this Women’s History month. Last year I printed out black and white pictures of inspiring women at 50% transparency and students used the pages to paint monochromatic images that brightened our afternoon and our classroom.
Students honed their research skills while creating Bio poems about inspiring women with this activity.
Sometimes it is as simple as allowing students to respond to a complex text with a drawing or by making a symbol with play-doh. It is critical we set our students up for success on these rigorous tests, but we don’t have to sacrifice joy together.
I can’t help unbreak the headphones a student “accidentally” stepped on five times, but hopefully these ideas will make the rest of state testing prep season easier for you. As always, comment with any questions or your own ELA test taking strategies.
