Prepare for Annual Testing in Elementary School

With the new year around the corner, many teachers are wondering how to prepare for annual testing in elementary school. Now is the perfect time to take about an hour to plan this out for your class. There are tasks to plan for you as the teacher and items to consider for your students. I will discuss both in this article.

Teacher Preparation

If you have access to a copy of the state test (or a study guide) review what is tested and which standards this tests. Some study guides or online information will let you know how many test items are listed per standard. This information is very important. You will need to map out a calendar from now until your testing window. You will need too determine what content in each subject area that needs to be taught and add that into your planning schedule.

I’ve written another article about Planning strategies. You can read it here:

7 Ways Collaborative Planning Improves Learning

Let me explain. Let’s say you are a third grade teacher and you are looking through the math section on the exam. Perhaps when reviewing you discover that there are five questions on multi-step problems and only one question on fractions. With this knowledge, which of these would you emphasize? Now, I am not proposing that you ignore the fractions content, but if time is limited, spend much more time on the multi-step questions.

This analysis of test content may take a while, especially if you teach a grade level that tests other content areas as well as math and reading.

Once you know this information, you can begin your planning for a review for testing. I suggest you begin this review timeline 6 weeks before the testing window. Also do not spend more than 50 minutes a day on this review….you don’t want to burn the students out on this review. Perhaps tie the study time to a reward of some type if they are all trying hard and paying attention.

Next, schedule which days to review which subjects and begin the process. A huge recommendation to consider is to tackle this review with a few of your team members. Perhaps you can group the students for remediation or review of skills that they need review in. Also consider pulling aside small groups in your own class if only a few students need help with a certain standard.

One thing my team partner and I did one year was to add an additional math period into our daily schedule for about a month. We had determined that we wouldn’t get to a certain content standard before our testing window. We needed to make sure it was taught so this was our solution.

Student Preparation

Besides the curriculum topics that will need to be taught and reviewed, teachers need to introduce information about test taking skills to students. You need to discuss and practice strategies such as the process of elimination. Also teach about finding the key words in the context of the question and trying their best. Another tip to teach is searching for the best answer.

There are also now strategies that you need to teach in regards to taking the test online. They may need to pay attention to time allotted for the section, whether or not they are allowed to go back to previous pages online, how to use the online tools needed to complete the exam; for example highlighting underlining, using a ruler or clock.

Thankfully, most students have become very capable online and are used to the mouse or screen movements such as drag and drop, enlarging and moving the curser, so a quick review of these skills will be sufficient.

If you do these two ways to prepare for annual testing (teacher preparation and preparing your students) then you will be “ahead of the game” and can feel confident that you have done all you can to be ready.

Good luck with your annual testing.

Until Next Time,