Helpful Testing Hints 101

 

The open response portion of the state test can be tricky for students to navigate. We have done a lot of talking about what the test corrector look for as I am not the one assessing their work on the actual state test. Those people are trained to make sure the student answered the question and can back up their thinking with evidence from the story. This is why I teach the students to incorporate quotes and this proves statement in their open responses. In the short answer questions they do not need to write lengthy paragraphs but I would still include quotes to support thinking to show the person correcting where you got the information. I once had a student answer a question about Ben Franklin, giving an in depth response. The student had studied Ben Franklin and wrote everything he knew about Ben. However the score that student got was a 0. It broke my heart because he spent so much time on it on the actual state test; however, since he did not use any evidence from the text the people did not know if he even read the story.  This is why I drill into our agents that when answering these questions they must only use details from the story unless it asks for their opinion. It is okay to make inferences in the "this proves" section because that shows you are reading between the lines.
 
Another tip I shared with students today is that when taking a math assessment rather than spend a significant amount of time struggling over one problem give yourself the freedom to skip it and go back to it. As they get older most students will only have the class period to complete the assessment. If they get stuck half way through and time runs out they will be scored on what they completed (which is only half the assessment). If they skip the problem and complete what they can then they will find they will receive a higher score because they did as many problems as they could before going back to the one they skipped. I hope students find this advice helpful.