Test Prep #1--As Promised.

First, I would love to thank Kim and MrsL and Living a Wonderful life for their comments on my previous posting.  It is essentially official---I will not be teaching 6th grade next year.  Unless New York decides to fund education...in that case I won't be holding my breath.  I need to figure out a plan for next year.  Should I relocate?  Do I stick it out?  I know it's just March but I like to plan ahead and I am mighty worried.

ANYWAY, I promised last week that I would share some of what I have been doing with my kiddos to prep for the state exam.  It began yesterday with a little of this:

WHATTTTT!?!  You may ask.  We had about 12 of these black posters with a label up around the room. n I basically took 4 of the state exams from the past and copied them on different colored paper depending on the year. I cut apart I had one of my awesome student helpers cut apart the multiple choice questions.  From there, I determined on my own the major categories, Inference, Word Meaning, Adding Information, Setting, Prediction, Text Features, Author's Purpose/Craft, Non-fiction, Interpreting a character's feeling, Poetic/Literary Elements, Main Idea...etc.  I then passed them out among the students.  The tougher questions I gave extra to my quick thinkers.  Anyway, we taped them up where we thought they should be.  I scanned through them and we fixed "ones that needed a new home."  This worked SO WELL to show my kiddos what they need to work on in order to be successful...and what is generally tested ("ohhhh so that's why we do so much with inference!-student).  I would HIGHLY recommend a similar activity for your students.  Understanding WHAT the question is ASKING is 1/2 the battle!  It was fun, interactive, and my kids loved when I said "Today I cut apart the state test" (*gasps*) "That's right, and we are going to sort the multiple choice questions and you can complete this successfully without reading one passage!" (*cheers*)  It was sweet.  Then we took a practice test for the multiple choice section.  Not their favorite, but necessary.  One of my SPED kids only missed 2 of the 26 questions---woo hoo!

Then, today we started to tackle the listening section...aka book 2.  We did a TON of modeling where the push in SPED teacher and I modeled taking good GAP notes, filling in, etc. while the other read.  We then started working on the short answers.  I introduced this:

They remembered it!  We then started in on the extended response.  We were doing such a nice job and I could tell we were getting restless.  So I made the executive decision to go outside for the last 15 minutes of the block. Good choice since here in NY we are already in the 80s....yes, the 80s...this week.  It is SO hot here!!!

Anyway, those are just some quick ideas on Test Prep...I will share more tomorrow when we start centers!!!

Much Love,