Raising Test Scores

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Archive : 2007 : October : 14

Raising Test Scores
By Risa

I agree wholeheartedly with the previous posts. I was amazed that my own students' test scores also went up last year, because that was the most difficult group I've had in all of my long teaching career!

During our
one-on-one meeting with the principal to review test scores for my last group and set new goals for the current group, I was asked what I did to help them all increase their test scores. I told her that, despite the constant discipline interruptions, I focused on teaching with and having students use academic language as well as higher level questioning (Bloom's Taxonomy). This was especially

the case when working on developing reading comprehension. I also made sure I was consistent with teaching general test taking strategies.

I work in a low socio-economic area where most students speak Spanish in the home, so I worked extensively on vocabulary development which included work with multiple meaning words, prefixes and suffixes, Greek and Latin root words, teaching and using figurative language such as similes, metaphors, and idioms. I suppose it all boiled down to focusing on helping my students learn how to find word meanings from word parts in order to gain better reading comprehension.

I found many useful posts here on ProTeacher as well! As a matter of fact, your post reminded me that I started up a 'scrapbook' of PT posts for 'Test Prep' ideas. Right after I read your question, I went to make the collection 'public', so I think you should be able to find it in the 'Collections'. I think it's important that we start now and continue building on what we are doing throughout the school year so that students truly will be fully prepared and confident that they have done all they could to succeed.

I used internet resources extensively, as well. Here is one that I found useful:

ELA Types of Questions and Strategies
http://teachersnetwork.org/NTNY/nychelp/AssessFam/ELA_dec/Q&S.pdf

I also had my student use internet games to reinforce skills after they were taught. I posted my 'game' links on this thread:
http://www.proteacher.net/discussions/showthread.php?t=51084

Thanks for posing this question because, along with all that we are doing school-wide, it made me think about what worked last year, and what I need to start working on TOMORROW! :s)