My strategies (kinda long!)

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My strategies (kinda long!)
By Lisa, fellow new 4th teacher

This will be my first year teaching, but I'm pretty familiar with what I have to prepare my kids for. Here in Texas my students have three tests- reading, math, and writing. Here is how I plan on preparing my students for
each test and not teaching to the test!
Reading- The skills are pretty basic- main idea, summarizing, context clues, recalling information, etc. So why not incorporate those skills into all reading? You can easily discuss these things while reading whatever you want to be reading!
Math- When I student taught, I taught each subject exactly the way I wanted to. They passed my tests

just fine, but it didn't transfer to the TAAS questions. So I would spend one, and only one, math period showing the students what questions on that subject would look like on the test, and how to use what they had just learned to solve them. That one day was usually enough to get them thinking on the right track!

Writing- My kids have to write essays in four styles- narrative, compare/contrast, how-to, and persuasive. From the very beginning, I plan on encorporating the basic skills necessary to write these into all subjects. Story mapping will be done in reading to help students understand plot, and we will discuss things like characters and setting so that they understand why these details are important. Venn diagrams can be used in any subject to help students understand how to compare and contrast. Lists will be used to practice how-to anytime a good opportunity arises. And persuasion, which is a lot more complicated, may not incorporate very well, but I hope to find ways to show the kids how to back up their arguments whenever I can! I will also work on making their sentences better and more elaborate, and eventually I will pull it all together and show them how to write the paper that our state wants!

We also have to do proofreading as part of writing. I'll work on this two ways- DOL or some other morning exercise, and editing each other's writing!

As long as you are teaching all of the topics that will be covered on the test in an effective way, you will have the flexibility to teach the way you want to. But as much as we all want to avoid it, we will have to spend some time working on sample questions and test strategies. Good luck!