Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Standardized Testing

So I love all the theory we learn about within the warner school classes and some of it seems to be extremely helpful in planning lessons. The only problem I have seen within my student teaching placement is that students will understand a concept and be able to talk to you or their peers about it; they will even be able to create projects involving it. However, when it comes to being tested by regents questions their reading comprehension skills lead to their failure of tests. One way in which I tried to combat this was by creating an appendix for the tests I gave at first. This appendix explained what each of these questions meant in words that the students understood. I found that this did help but eventually they need to understand the questions without a crutch if standardized testing continues. What other things can we do to prepare our students? Should we be teaching reading in every class?

1 comment:

Grace said...

What's the exact problem you're dealing with? Is it vocabulary or the elaborate phrasing used in scientific language or the format of the test itself? If it's vocab, you may be able to incorporate that more into classroom discussions so that students are familiar with the technical names for the processes they're describing. If it's scientific phrasing, maybe you could stress that on lab reports. I think it's important to get the students using the the language themselves rather than just reading it or having it spoken to them. If it's the test itself, then it may help to go over a couple of practice test in groups or pairs. There's no one right answer of course, but if you can pinpoint the exact nature of their difficulty, it may be easier to come up with a viable solution.