The GED® test was built from the ground up to give students a test that measures the skills they need to succeed. The test focuses on the foundational knowledge and skills needed for career and college readiness, so colleges and employers know that students who pass the GED® test have the skills to excel on the job or in the classroom. This…

Preparing at-risk youth and students with mild disabilities for state and district tests is important for improving their test performance, and basic instruction in test preparation can significantly improve student test performance. The article defines noncognitive variables that adversely affect test-taker performance. The article also describes…

This paper provides suggestions for preparing students to take the actuarial examination on financial mathematics, SOA/CAS Exam FM/2. It is based on current practices employed at Slippery Rock University, a small public liberal arts university. Detailed descriptions of our Theory of Interest course and subsequent Exam FM/2 prep course are provided…

Traditional review sessions are intended to help students learn and prepare for upcoming exams. Most sessions are passive question and answer sessions that look backward at content deficits rather than advancing student learning. By incorporating active and cooperative learning approaches during a review session, students are able to recognize…

Preparation for high-stakes testing, while unavoidable, may become meaningful, these authors argue. The article illustrates the case of a third-grade classroom in a metropolitan public school, where test preparation was approached as genre study. In addition to examining the specific unit of study, the authors describe the efforts of the classroom…

In this paper I describe a method to help students go back and better understand material they got wrong on multiple-choice tests. (Contains 3 footnotes.)

Despite their current popularity, many still view coaching schools for college admissions as somehow vaguely unethical, as a form of "teaching to the test." But "coaching" as an instructional exercise only crosses some ethical line of propriety when instructors have access to and in fact teach the actual items that will appear…

By viewing standardized reading tests as a unique genre that could be taught, the author designed a two-week genre study for her reading workshop. The article describes how she planned, taught, and reflected on the unit. This genre study resolved some of the dilemmas she faced around preparing students for mandated testing. (Contains 1 table and 2…

Teachers can do something to help ensure students will do better on tests. They can actively teach test-taking skills so pupils will be better armed in the battle to acquire knowledge. The author challenges teachers to use the suggestions provided in this article in the classroom, and to share them with their students. Test-taking strategies will…

Describes an adaptation of the Guided Reading Procedure which was used both to help bridge the gap between students' abilities in Spanish and the reading material contained in their content textbooks and to prepare them for taking the Advanced Placement Spanish Language Examination. (SED)

The Santa Fe Community College (Gainesville, Florida) offers courses to prepare students for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The two classes--one intermediate and one advanced--meet three times a week for three hours each session. Grammar explanations are presented during the first two classes each week, and students are offered…

The review presented and discussed in this paper explores the theoretical underpinnings and research findings of the washback of high-stakes tests in the field of language teaching and testing as well general education and suggests areas and ways of researching the phenomenon in the future. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

This final report describes the activities, results, and conclusions of a 3-year project whose major purpose was to improve test-taking skills of learning-disabled and behaviorally disordered students, with respect to standardized achievement tests. The project concluded that: learning-disabled and behaviorally disordered students exhibit deficits…

Argues that history teachers do not give enough attention to preparing students for major tests. Maintains that the responsibility for test preparation should be divided between the students and teacher. Provides a set of six procedures designed to help students review course content and prepare for examinations. (CFR)

Discusses teaching Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. history at an urban, minority high school. Addresses student recruitment; using a summer assignment; notetaking and the Document-Based Quiz, various teaching strategies; preparing and reviewing for the AP examination; using special events; and the importance of professional development and…