A day doesn't go by without my fellow teachers and me hearing buzz about No Child Left Behind (NCLB). For better or worse, NCLB has become part of educators' lives.
When I first began administering state test preparation in my language arts classes, I found it incredibly boring. It felt so formulaic, and rarely did the stories or prompts engage my students or interest me. As a result, grading their work was as torturous as their completion of it. But, when I began embedding test preparation into the curriculum, the whole experience became much more positive.
My students take the Language Arts Literacy section of the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge, which consists of persuasive, speculative, and explanatory writing and reading comprehension sections. Rather than distribute practice tests created by various measurement companies, I use the chapter the class is currently reading in a novel and model questions from the state tests.
Test prep can also provide an opening for teaching a wide range of topics and integrating new activities into classroom lessons. For example, I recently found that it provided me with a unique opportunity for integrating character education into the curriculum. I hoped to have students explore common character traits of humanitarians, but I couldn't easily fit the lesson into the state curriculum content standards. I could, however, justify it as test prep. I gave each student a biography of a different Nobel Laureate, for which they completed reading comprehension questions and a lengthy open-ended response that they shared with the class. For the persuasive writing prompt, I used editorials and provocative topics of interest to my students. I also found that students could help create fun speculative writing prompts or bring in their favorite song lyrics for the explanatory writing prompts. The possibilities for merging test preparation with your current curriculum are endless when you start thinking creatively.
The amount of time spent on test prep has not decreased; however, it is hidden. As the test nears, I hear students ask, "Are we going to prepare for the test at all?” illustrating that the preparation material has fit organically into the coursework. And after the exams, I have yet to hear a student say they did not feel prepared.