Reflections on Test Talk
June 2008
The book Test Talk inspires an online exchange about good and bad test-prep strategies
Kelli Thexton, a literacy coach in Rogers, AR, noticed that right around testing time a big shift occurs in her school. "Come testing time, our great instruction shuts down and test prep begins."
Kelli's struggle is one that teachers and students face in classrooms across the country: preparing for those inevitable state tests without sacrificing valuable curriculum. But tests are a fact of life -- in school and beyond -- and a recent book by Glennon Doyle Melton and Amy Greene helps teachers with strategies to turn their students into effective test-takers without giving up powerful, purposeful instruction.
"We decided it was our duty as educators to prepare our students for the challenges of the real world, not a perfect one," the authors write in the introduction to Test Talk: Integrating Test Preparation into Reading Workshop. Their school in Annandale, Va., was struggling to meet state standards when teachers began to reverse some of their thinking about tests and test-preparation and through the process they came to three fundamental beliefs about preparing students for testing:
1. Successful test takers must first be smart readers
2. Successful test takers must be able to translate the unique language of the test
3. Learning to be a successful test taker can be fun!
Throughout Test Talk, Amy and Glennon demonstrate how to encourage student readers to examine tests as a specific genre containing unique language, format, and cues. They provide lesson plans, sample test questions, and suggested language teachers can use during reading workshop.
Several members of the Mosaic Listserv voiced their fears and frustrations when it comes to testing during a recent discussion of Test Talk.
"As a literacy coach, I have always tried to show teachers that if we just provide that great instruction, with the test prep built in, our kids will do just fine on the high stakes test," says Kelli. Now, Test Talk helps her make her point as she shares and models lessons with her colleagues.
"I work with teachers and children in one of the most impoverished counties in the country," wrote Lori Jackson, district literacy coach and mentor in Mission, SD. For her school, adequate yearly progress (AYP), is "just a pipe dream," but they make steady progress with their students every year. "I am so fearful of what could be pressed on our teachers, our district, and our students in hope of making AYP," Lori writes. She bought copies of Test Talk for all of the coaches in her building, hoping to focus their discussions on how to address testing problems by making some simple adjustments in their instruction.
Mary Baker, a fifth-grade teacher in Bakersfield, CA, was looking for specific ideas on how she can integrate test preparation into her instruction. "What I absolutely love about this book is the ability to read something one night, type up the suggested passages, run off on overheads and teach it the next day," she said.
Read more about Amy H. Greene.
Read more about Glennon Doyle Melton.
