Preparing Elementary Students for Standardized Math Tests

During standardized testing season teachers often find themselves grappling with mounting pressure. The urgency for students to perform well in this limited time frame can be overwhelming, making it feel nearly impossible to review an entire year’s worth of content effectively.

Many educators might consider it unrealistic to prep in the small amount of time allotted, and cramming will not lead to the success that comes from strategic preparation. Engaging students through repetitive task cards or numerous worksheets often results in low motivation and anxiety, turning an already stressful time into a dreaded experience.

This “season” is not solely meant for a review of math content. There are meaningful ways teachers can strategically prepare students for this type of assessment. When considering the aspects of the test, there are three categories to think about: the content, the test structure, and test-taking behaviors.

strategically preparing students to do well on tests

Content. Since we can’t review everything from the entire year within the short time of test prep, we have to be strategic. Looking at your standardized test blueprint, see what is most heavily tested. Keep your student data in mind, and find a match where you have a lot of students who need help with specific high-leverage concepts. This is what is most important for success, not only on the test, but for preparation for the following school year.

Since students already have experience with this content, collaborative problem-solving would be a great structure for high engagement, collaboration, and exploration. This model allows students to learn from each other and use other content they’ve absorbed to make connections to other ideas they’ve learned.

Pockets of students who still need support with high-leverage concepts can be taught in small groups based on what will be the most impactful.

Test structure. The test structure includes question types, testing tools, and recording work from screen to paper. One way to easily boost student scores is to ensure that students understand how the question types work.

On the standardized test in my state, there is a question type called a Fraction Model, where students have to represent their answer using an online tool. For example, let’s say students have solved the problem correctly and are trying to represent their answer of five-eighths. They are first asked how many pieces are in the whole. Then they are asked right below how many should be shaded. This means they will first have to input eight and then input five below it. This is not natural for students because they always see the numerator above the denominator, ⅝. A lot of students have gotten those questions wrong because of a simple misconception related to the structure of online testing types.

This time of year would be perfect to teach these specific nuances of question types that you typically see students struggle with or have resulted in low scores on standardized testing in years past. When teaching direct lessons to students, use questions that have highly tested concepts to give more exposure to content at the same time.

Test-taking behaviors. If students don’t experience tests like these very often, it can provoke anxiety. It’s important to directly teach what to do when they get stuck and don’t know how to complete a problem, what to do when they get overwhelmed, and how to persevere when they get tired.

Consider teaching these skills as whole group lessons so that students normalize these behaviors and know exactly what to do when they encounter these feelings.

How to Approach test prep Throughout the Year

The most effective test prep happens all year long. The key principles that every teacher needs to know to easily increase retention and transfer of learning are spaced retrieval and interleaving. For learning not to be forgotten, it has to be revisited all year long.

Spaced retrieval refers to having spaced-out opportunities throughout the year for students to retrieve their learning on a particular concept and apply it to new situations. Interleaving refers to having varying concepts on assessments or assignments so that students have to have a higher level of problem-solving to figure out what to do based on all they have previously learned.

To increase student achievement on culminating standardized assessments, we cannot aim for low-level retention; we need to aim for transfer. Retention means students can remember formulas or key words to solve word problems. Transfer occurs when the learning is so deeply encoded that students can apply what they retained to new and novel situations.

Here are some ways to big-picture plan for test prep next year.

1. Name the standards that students will need exposure to all year long within assessments and learning stations, and collect materials to prep.
2. Consider all of the standards your incoming students learned in the last half of their prior year of school. Figure out what you need to place in learning stations so they don’t forget their learning from the prior year as you teach them new content. (For example, if I am a fourth-grade teacher and I know that geometry, measurement, and graphs are taught within the last half of third grade, I need to see what third-grade materials I can use for students to practice perimeter, area, and graphs so they don’t lose that learning before I add on to that learning in fourth grade.)
3. Create a plan of assessments for spaced retrieval and interleaving based on the scope and sequence. No more assignments on one recently learned concept. Students need to have retrieval practice with a variety of problems on different concepts to make their learning transfer. These types of assessments take a lot of time because students have to pull the learning out of their long-term memory, so they should have only four to five questions on them. I know this can feel like it isn’t enough questions to give a grade on, but if you give points based on behaviors instead of only right or wrong, it can provide the needed points. (For example, each problem could get a point for an accurate representation, an equation, a correct answer, and an answer statement.)
4. Ensure that those assessments consider not only the content, but also the question types. This way, students don’t feel as intimidated by the different ways questions are asked, and teachers can address misconceptions about the question type all year in small group instruction.
5. Students need to have accountability throughout the year for showing their work when they use technology. Working out problems from the screen to paper is a unique skill set that students need to practice. This tip is one of the easiest to implement, but also one of the ones I see the most that causes students to perform lower than teachers expect. One of the most valuable ways to tackle this is to help students understand how the brain works. The working memory can hold only four to seven items at a time, depending on the complexity and level of mastery of the items being considered. We don’t ask students to show their work because it is a teacher demand; we do it because when students put their thoughts to paper in an organized way, they free up space to think again and attack the problem more deeply.
6. Lastly, teaching students test-taking strategies as daily reminders of what to do whenever they get stuck, overwhelmed, or tired can create good habits for everyday life that they can then transfer easily from the math classroom.

While there are strategies to use right before test time, taking a big-picture view of the school year to create a plan for students to tackle all of these aspects will be most impactful. Not only will it relieve the anxiety for students, but it will release pressure on teachers to shove all of this into a short period of time. Students and teachers will feel prepared and be truly able to treat testing day like any other day.