It’s that time of the year where schools across the country are either just beginning their spring break or counting down the days until it finally arrives. Spring break, a long stretch from the winter holidays, can help students and teachers quickly recoup and prepare for the last leg of the school year. For many teachers, however, spring break signifies the end of the regular school year curriculum. What they had hoped to accomplish for the year seems to fall short. This is due to the fact that they are now in the standardized testing season and it seems like all efforts go towards preparing students for the tests. 

As a former sixth grade teacher, I too experienced the pressure and anxieties of the testing season. The pressure to begin preparing my students for exams didn’t come from my administration, but in fact, it was my students’ parents reaching out via email, wondering when their child would be coming home with a test question packet to work on. The pressure is real!

This blog is not being written to debate whether standardized testing should be a requirement in schools or not. Standardized tests are designed to gauge a student’s grade level content and skills, and those scores impact federal funding as well as individual state rankings. So, for argument’s sake, standardized testing is important. With that being said, let us discuss strategies that can be implemented throughout the year so that teachers can focus on the curriculum through the end of the school year and not just until spring break. 

Assessments to prep for standardized testing

You can begin preparing students for standardized tests with the three major types of assessments: diagnostic, formative, and summative. Diagnostic assessments are pretests that you can implement to see how much students know about a topic before starting it. Teachers can utilize online quizzes before starting each unit to gauge where the class stands on their knowledge of a topic. Formative assessments are similar to snapshots of how students are understanding a topic.  You can implement these in the form of entry/exit slips and “do nows.”  They can be digital or on traditional pen and paper. Summative assessments are the wrap up exams. Combining multiple choice, DBQs, reading comprehension, projects, or research papers are all examples of how a summative assessment will evaluate a students’ overall progress.

Implementing these throughout the school year will prepare students for spring assessments. They will also help explain to parents that you are not going to stop your regular curriculum to do test prep, as you have been doing it all along!

Addressing testing anxiety

There are, however, a few things to consider when it comes time for spring assessments, and the first would be managing test anxiety. According to the American Test Anxiety Association, a whopping 40% of students have moderate to high test anxiety! So, what can you do? Build coping strategies and healthy habits in your students such as: practicing controlled breathing, getting some sleep, eating a nutritious meal before a test, creating a calming environment, and imagining positive outcomes.

Most of all, build students’ confidence for test taking by letting them know that there is no magic bullet. They have been taking tests their entire lives and these spring assessments are no different. They are more than prepared to do their best. 

Hopefully, these strategies help you and your students to approach standardized testing season with less stress. Make sure to watch our accompanying course, “Strategies to Prepare Students for Standardized Testing” on OTIS. For more tips and strategies, check out our Edu Resources section and follow us on social for the latest on all things Teq. 

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