Test Question Strategies

Many districts across the nation are in the process of taking their yearly state-mandated annual progress tests.  Teachers have been preparing students all year long and it is crunch time now!  Today we will be sharing some test question strategies.  Let us know what you think.

Vocabulary Questions

*Teach students to read the entire sentence to figure out the meaning of the word in context.  Remind them to look back to previous sentences or read ahead to help infer the meaning of the word.

*Sometimes the definition of a word appears right in the sentence along with the test word.  Teach students to look and see if the definition is nearby.

*Teach suffixes and prefixes.  

*Remind students to cross off definitions that they know do not fit the meaning of the unfamiliar word and choose the closest match.

Summarizing and Synthesizing Questions

*Remind students that the questions  that are mostly about the reading require them to read for the gist.

*Identifying the main idea:  students need to ask themselves what the passage is mainly about.  Look through the passage to see how many times a word is repeated as a clue.

*Teach students to screen out their own personal opinion and keep to the information in the passage.

*The most important information is often revealed in the first or last paragraph of a passage.  The most important information in a paragraph is usually placed in the first or last sentence of the paragraph.