Standardized tests require students to engage independently – without instructional support – and consider a wide range of content and contexts in one sitting. While students can complete many practice tests ahead of time, we know that developing thinking and reasoning will serve students more effectively in the long run, even when they forget a formula or approach content that seems unfamiliar.
How can you leverage reasoning routines to develop the kind of thinking that will help them on standardized tests and beyond? The answer lies in the aspect of student thinking you’re working on and/or the question type that students need practice with.
Let’s explore how we’ve inserted tasks from Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) released items. In fact, we work with districts to customize these ‘test prep’ plans.
Decide and Defend
Decide and Defend engages students in the work of analyzing others’ thinking, communicating their own ideas, and persevering through a lengthy task – all necessary components of standardized tests!
- Drop a test question with a worked example into the middle
- Mock up an incorrect response highlighting a common misconception
- Mock up a correct response that incorporates a representations in which student can “see” the underlying concept
Example of a 6th grade MCAS question (2023) adapted to engage students in Decide and Defend:
Three Reads
Three Reads builds students’ capacities to read and interpret math problems on their own and to name quantities and relationships as a precursor to solving tasks.
- Remove the question and or the values for quantities (i.e. numbers) to focus students’ attention on the interpreting process
Contemplate then Calculate
Contemplate then Calculate underscores the positive impact of pausing to interpret instead of calculating compulsively. It supports students to avoid detailed calculations – that often invite errors and take additional time. Engaging in Contemplate then Calculate also builds students’ capacities to notice mathematical features and attributes of numbers, expressions, and representations.
- Select standardized test questions that can be reasoned through structurally rather than following lengthy procedures
This example from the 2023 Grade 10 MCAS highlights the structural elements of an expression that help determine whether an expression is rational or irrational.
Connecting Representations
Connecting Representations engages students in multiple representations, builds conceptual understanding, and often leverages students’ strengths in one representation to make sense of another representation.
- Turn a multiple-choice question that incorporates two different types of representations into a Connecting Representations task set.
This example from the 2023 Grade 3 MCAS question highlights the structural elements of arrays – composing and decomposing them and representing them with expressions.
Regardless of the reasoning routine you focus on and leverage during test prep, remember that students benefit most from the thinking and reasoning they develop – not the answers they get!
