We have officially arrived at the point in the year where panic ensues. The fourth marking period is here and there is still. so. much. to. do. And with the additional pressures of AP and state testing season, to say I’m feeling overwhelmed would be an understatement. The truth is that it’s when the going […]
Category: Test Preparation
Leaning into Difficult Topics: Toward an Informed Stance
After the Parkland school shooting in February, we witnessed something tangible shift in our discourse about school safety and gun regulation. Nationally, we saw and still see young people like the Parkland student survivors stand up and make their voices heard, including the CNN sponsored town hall with Florida politicians and a coordinated student-led walkout on […]
3 Tips for AP Lang Test Prep
Like most teachers, I’ve had a estranged relationship with the AP exam—and any standardized test. Do we have an obligation to prepare students for the “test”? I think so. But that obligation can never supplant the greater responsibility we bear to build our students’ literacy lives in an increasingly challenging world. Or put another way—do […]
Tackling IB Literature Papers I & II: Test Prep Without Test Rep
IB exams begin in early May, and I’m a teacher who loves to settle into a discussion when the ideas are good and they just keep coming, so if you asked my students to identify an external conflict in the drama of senior year of IB Literature, they would say “Ms. Jochman vs. the calendar.” […]
The SAT Essay: Preparing Students for the Test & Tips for Sealing the Deal
There aren’t any cheat sheets or formulas to help students do well on the SAT essay. But as it turns out, that might actually be a good thing.
Low stakes writing: How I reclaimed my sanity and unburied myself from grading.
My first year teaching AP Language, I was overwhelmed by the grading. The class culminates in a three hour exam; for two of those hours, students are writing three different essays. The amount of prep your average student needs to confidently bang out three essays asking them to do three different things in two hours? […]
A Test-Prep/Writing Workshop Loop
I acknowledge that learning to really craft writing on demand (rather than brain-dumping on demand) is an important skill for our students to cultivate. They will all engage in some kind of timed, test-like writing situation in their academic lives. And after that, they will still be asked to compose something on-the-spot in job interviews […]
Planning a Course With a Looming Writing Test
As this post goes live, my Grade 12 students will be finishing their final assessment in their course, a Provincial Assessment. They will have written a process exam for the past four days. Based around a single theme, which they learn on the first day, they were expected to read, respond and write. The first […]
Test Prep for Below-Grade-Level Writers
Test Prep for below-grade-level writers needs to involve strategies that build them up without overwhelming them
Teaching to the Writing Test – a Moving Writers series
Although there may be a horde of teachers who have whittled it down to a perfect science, no teacher has ever been excited or invigorated by preparing his or her students for a standardized writing test. And yet, it’s something that pretty much every one of us must do in one way or another. Like […]
