My Favorite Test-Taking Strategy

When you think of the test-taking strategies that you discuss with your students, which ones would you rank as the most critical? I can think of several important strategies, including eliminating answers you know are incorrect and finding evidence in the text to support the answer you have chosen. If I were asked to choose a favorite, however, another strategy stands out to me. In my experience, students respond well to this strategy and it improves their test-taking experience. What is it? Teach your students to read through the questions before reading the passage. Reading the question stems first allows students to get a general idea as to what the passage is going to be about. It also alerts them to details they should be looking for as they read.

When I introduce this strategy to students, we begin by working through a few passages as a group. I ask students to help me pick out key words and phrases in each question stem, and we highlight them.

After having gone through each question, students know that this passage is probably going to be about a sport named pickleball, and if they are not familiar with pickleball, they will know that it uses a net. Furthermore, students know to look for information about pickleball rules and about the height of the net. They also know to watch for the term "pickle boat". They probably won't remember all of these topics, but chances are good that they will recall one or two. For example, when Ben reaches the end of the first paragraph in the passage below, he might remember the question about the net being lowered to 36 inches, and highlight the sentence since he knows that it likely contains the answer to one of the questions. Later, when he encounters the term "pickle boat", he might highlight it an read that sentence a little more carefully. Then, when the time comes for him to answer the question, he will easily be able to find the sentence in the passage that contains "pickle boat".

Also, when we run across questions like Question #5, I stress to students that this is one of those questions that they can likely answer without even reading the text. It is not related to the content of the passage. Rather, it is testing the student's knowledge of vocabulary and relationships between words.

Do you want to test this tip with your students? Click HERE to download this pickleball passage!

If you are looking for reading passages to use with your upper elementary students, feel free to check out the following links- just click on the images below! (The first three sets are written for students reading at a 4th/5th grade reading level. The final set is written at a lower readability level ideal for third-grade readers.)

  

  

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