How to prepare students for end of the year testing?

Yep! It’s that time of year again! What is the most effective way to prepare students for an end of year reading exam? Let’s first quickly eliminate the wrong ways!

A.DO NOT Focus exclusively on practice items. (This is called Drill and Kill)

B. DO NOT Focus on using “Practice books” that have sample questions. (Again, more Drill and Kill)

So how can we prepare students for end of year testing?

C.Do Focus on student data. (What benchmarks/standards do students need remediation and enrichment on?)

D. Do Focus on building stamina in students with incorporating more lengthy grade level complex texts.

E. Do focus TEXT-SETS- Grade-Level texts used together centered on a topic i.e. benchmark.

F. Do focus Close reading strategies combined with culminating writing task.