Test Taking Strategies

These are a list of test taking strategies that will be discussed with upper elementary students throughout the school year in helping them prepare for state standardized testing. Note Taking Skills and Strategies- What will be emphasized is the various types of note taking such as strategic note taking and guided note taking. Strategic note taking focuses on describing, summarizing and listing main points of an idea. Guided note taking focuses on creating an outline of a story or general topic. Students will be informed the importance of note taking such as how they aid student understanding of lecture information, and they serve as reference material for later study. Study Skills Help and Tips- Learning how to memorize, concentrate, and use effective study systems will be the focus of this lesson. It will also focus on how the SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review) and the KWL (What I Know, What I Want to Know, and What I Learned). Breaking Tasks into Meaningful Chunks- Will focus on breaking up time to study each subject or topic one at a time. Also, students will be able to understand how to look for connections to categories such as compare/contrast and cause/effect. Annotating Text- Highlighting and underlining text, circling definitions and meanings, writing key words in the margin, writing symbols around where key words can be found will be discussed. Using Visual Organizers- Students will understand the visual representation of facts and ideas through charts, graphs, timelines, flow charts, and diagrams. They will know how it relates and applies to written text. Critical Thinking Skills- the various types of critical thinking questions (Knowledge, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation) will be addressed for students and how they can organize these questions visually to answer them. Mnemonics (Memory Techniques) - Using acronyms (invention of a combination of letters), acrostics (an invented sentence), rhyme keys (creating and memorizing key words that associate), loci method (imagine placing items in various locations), image-name technique (invent the relationship with a name and physical characteristic), and chaining (create a story to remember groups of words) will help students grasp a better understanding of memorization.

Key Terms for State Standardized Testing

Achievement Test: A standardized test (usually multiple choice) that measures content-area knowledge (e.g., science, math, English, and social studies) and academic skills. Aptitude Test: A standardized, multiple-choice test that measures students' verbal and math reasoning abilities and is used by college admissions departments to predict how well a student will perform in college. Bell Curve: A graph representing test scores that shows the majority of students grouped in the middle, with an equal number both below and above the average. Criterion-Referencing: A scoring technique that shows a student's results in comparison to a benchmark or set standard of acceptable performance. Norm-Referencing: A scoring technique that shows a student's results in comparison to a "norm" group of students. The norm group typically answers one half of all questions correctly.