State Testing!!!! Oh joy....

State testing is always a downer when April or May approaches and students have to fill in ABC or D to prove what they have learned this year. Sometimes students are thrilled about the opportunity to showcase their knowledge and other times students dread coming to school for these long periods of testing.

I do my best to try and get students prepared for the test (there are great books like this one to help) which includes pumping up their confidence and reminding them that they know the information but this test just wants them to put it on paper and prove it. In our preparation over the last few weeks we went over test taking strategies and we created this anchor chart to help them remember how to relax during the big test days. We used the word relax and maybe an acronym out of it. I found something similar online so it's not original, but what in teaching is these days?

My students seemed to use it during testing as I heard some referring to the process of elimination. Perhaps with Common Core coming down the pipeline we will no longer have bubble in test and get a more accurate measure of knowledge learned throughout the year. Wishful thinking right?