By teaching students some test taking strategies, they can ease test anxiety and develop the skills needed to perform well. Whether preparing for state testing or just a weekly math test, read on for my favorite test taking strategies for elementary students.
Prioritizing Questions
Teach your students to scan the test and pick out the easiest questions to complete first. This will help them gain confidence before tackling the more difficult questions. It may also help free up time to spend on more tricky questions if they are under a time limit.
When teaching how to prioritize, I would provide students with a checklist of things to look out for. If a question is easy or hard can be personal, but as a teacher we know that some questions can be more difficult. For example, completing a multiple-choice over a short answer question will often be easier. Next, students might look at questions that have words they find difficult to read.
Skipping and Returning
Similar to prioritizing questions for difficulty, skipping and returning is a great test taking strategy for students. For skipping and returning, students will take the test in order but skip a question that is causing them to take a long time or is confusing. Make sure to teach students to mark the test question so they can return back to it at the end of the test. I like to teach students to circle the test number.
Familiarize Students with Test Formats
State tests have very specific formats and directions for completing. Throughout the school year, try to incorporate similar parts of the directions or mirror the directions for testing. When it’s time for the state test students won’t be surprised that the test environment needs to have zero voice levels, or that they are using a computer for the test.
Other ideas for using the test formats is to offer classroom tests in the same format. Does your state test use multiple-choice? Make sure that each test provides at least one question with a multiple-choice format. If your testing is done through computers, work with students throughout the year on typing programs (many great ones have free versions) so they only have to worry about their answers - not finding the right letters on the keyboard.
Practice Reading Instructions
Reading comprehension is crucial during assessments. Teach students to carefully read and understand instructions before answering questions. Encourage them to underline key information and refer back to the instructions as needed.
Just like we teach word problems, students should be familiar with key words in test directions.
Here are a few words students might come across in a test:
Analyze
Comment
Text
Define
Explain
Illustrate
Fact
Purpose
Identify
Diagram
Finding Text Evidence
Teaching my students to find text evidence is a yearlong process. With some students this comes easily, others really need daily practice. I like to teach students to underline their text evidence in passages with the number above it that corresponds to the question they are answering.
An example might be question 5 on the test is asking about a character’s response. The student would underline the sentence where the character is upset over dropping their ice cream and put a number 5 above it.
Another way to practice text evidence is through color-coding. I have used Teaching and Tapas reading passages for many years for this. I just love how students always need to color the text to match their comprehension questions and that they are standards-based and spiraled. They always make a great addition to my reading curriculum and I’m even using them right now for tutoring. Plus, it’s easy to grade when looking for a specific color highlighting the text.
Process of Elimination
A favorite among many teachers is teaching students the process of elimination. This test taking strategy is perfect for multiple-choice answers. Students will first rule out any answers that are ridiculous or just don’t make any sense as the answer. Next, students will look at what is left and decide if any of the words within the answer were not found in the question or might be illogical. Last, students will consider extreme wording like always or never in an answer. Students might want to put a small X in front of the options they are eliminating to keep track.
Checking Answers
Some of the ways students can learn to check their answers are to double-check their math calculations, verify all parts of a question were answered, and go back over their test when done. If a question has more than one part, I would ask students to put a small checkmark over each part when complete.
Rest and Relaxation
My last of the test taking strategies for elementary students is rest and relaxation. When talking about tests, of course we need to cover getting plenty of rest and relieving test anxiety! Unfortunately, sometimes rest is out of our students' control - alongside getting a good breakfast in the morning.
We can however teach our students how to take a deep breath before a test and learn some positive self-talk to do internally during tests. Even creating a test-taking mantra as a class to say before each test can be empowering for students.