Heads down, pencils up! It’s that time of year to begin preparation for those high school standardized tests. The level of emphasis placed on these exams is controversial; but the tests exist and educators have to prepare students to be engaged during the process. The following are just a few tips to help:

• Make test preparation fun—turn the test preparation into competitions. Break your class up into teams and playing games, i.e., a version of “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire” based on test questions. 
• Build stamina by encouraging students to read and write during block periods of time during class. Gradually increase the time, and provide reading material that the students are interested in.
• Simulate actual exams. This is probably the best preparation tip. Get the students acclimated by simulating the actual environment they will be testing in, preferably on a daily basis.
• Build the students’ vocabulary. Introduce new words and their meanings daily.

All of this information and more can be found in an excellent article, “Preparing High School Students for Standardized Exams” on the Scholastic Web site. The most important thing to remember is that test preparation is consistent and on-going; it cannot be crammed into a week before the actual test. Helping the students learn methodologies and strategies over the course of the school year will help them in the long run better than trying to cram several lessons into a short time period.

Happy learning!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 10:01 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.