Plan With a Purpose: How to Use Data to Get the Most Out of Test Prep Week (EP 31)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Elementary Math Chat!

I know a lot of you are on spring break this week. So, congratulations for making it to spring break! I know that’s a big accomplishment.

Today’s episode is part two in our test prep series. Last week, I shared what I did in the early stages of test prep, and this week, I’ll share what I did the week before testing. If you’ve listened to the last few episodes, then you’ve heard me talk about my test prep kit, and so I’m going to share all of that with you today.

So, let’s pick up where I left off last week. Typically, around the first week of April is when I would hold a test simulation day. This really helped my classes get a sense of what the test environment would look like, what it would feel like, and it was also a chance for me to answer all of their questions about testing, and for them to practice taking a test.

Now, I didn’t mention this last week, but something that saved me a lot of time was I did not manually grade these tests. I had them enter their scores in an online program, and this program is something that my district had. It’s called Performance Matters, so you may have it, and that program took care of all of the grading and all of the itemizing, so I didn’t have to do anything when it came to grading.

Now that I had this data, it helped me quickly determine what to cover in my whole group lessons. It helped me decide who to pull for small groups and what skills I would review with them. It helped me know what to put on their choice boards. Literally every single aspect of this test prep week was data-driven. 

Now there is a lot to cover in this episode. So, I’m going to break it down into three parts. I’ll first start with what I did for my whole group lessons, then I’ll go into my small group activities, and then I’ll end with what I did for choice boards.

I think deciding on what to review in your whole group lessons is probably the hardest part because you have so many things you want to review, but you may only have four or five days to review. So, it’s extremely important that you have some sort of data that will help you decide this.

What’s nice about the Performance Matters data is it color-codes it. So, all the red questions were ones that I needed to address in my whole group lessons and do a good review of those. If it was green, it was good, and I didn’t really need to address that in my whole group lesson.

They were pretty much the same skills every year, you know, they were always going to need to review line plots, interpreting remainders, and multistep word problems. So, for the most part, I could use the same lessons from year to year and just update them as needed, and that was nice.

One thing that was really helpful is our students each had their own test prep workbook that came with our math series, and that’s what we used for our whole group lesson. So, I was not creating lessons from scratch. I was just using what was already provided.

So, that covers my whole group lessons, and again, I just looked at my data. If I had a lot of kids miss something on two-digit multiplication, then I knew I not only needed to review that question, and maybe it was just a bad question. Sometimes that’s the case. But I also needed to review that skill in my whole group lesson.

For my small group activities, I once again looked at the data. But this time I looked at the yellow questions. So, those were questions that maybe seven or eight students missed. Those are the skills that I would review in a small group setting, and just for those students. 

Those did change from year to year, so I wasn’t doing the same small groups each year just because I used the data to determine what only a handful of students needed to review.

They were sometimes even different between my two classes, you know, there may have been times when one class didn’t have anyone miss a question on measuring angles, but then another one had five or six.

What I did for small groups during this test prep week is when they came to my table, I started by reviewing the problem on the test that they missed. So, I would have their practice tests at my table, and because they were graded online, they did not have the correct answer marked on the paper copy.

So, we started by going through the question that they missed, and a lot of times they knew right away what they did wrong. So, we talked about this along with what the possible distractors were, and then I had them rework the problem to get the correct answer. 

After that, I gave them either a few task cards to complete on the same skill or I had problems written on the board for them to complete. So, these were pretty quick. I’d say maybe 10 minutes they were with me, and that way I was able to get through a few different groups in one day.

Now, I actually did not pull these groups during my normal math block, and I’ll explain why I did this in a bit. But the week before testing, I ended up extending my math block into my science time, and that’s when I pulled my small groups. So, I had about two hours each day, and that was the only way I was able to get all of this in. If you have that flexibility, you might want to consider that.

So, that takes care of my whole group lessons and small group activities. Let’s move on to what my choice boards looked like because that made up a huge portion of their test prep week.

We take the TCAP test here in Tennessee. So, I took the letters of TCAP (T, C, A, P) and I made a choice board around it. I ended up renaming it as an activity board instead, because I kind of liked the sound of that better, and it made them think they were doing something totally new.

The T stood for teacher check, C stood for computer, A stood for at your seat, and P stood for partner math. Now, I know not everybody teaches in Tennessee and gives the TCAP test. That’s actually why it took me so long to put this on TPT because I knew it would only work for Tennessee teachers.

So, last year I went back and I made a few changes, and now the acronym is TEAM, and I call it the TEAM-work activity board. So, that computer station is now named electronics, and the partner math is now named math with a partner. Same activities, just a different acronym, and I actually like this name better because it takes teamwork to prepare for state testing.

Now, I did mention my test prep kit a little bit earlier, and the TEAM-work activity board is part of that along with all of the printable and digital activities I’m about to mention. I’ll go into further detail a little bit later about the test prep kit, but I wanted to tell you that on the front end just so you didn’t think you had to make all of this on your own. It is all included in the test prep kit.

So, let me give you a little glimpse into how this TEAM-work activity board works. By the way, all of the activities I’m about to mention are included in my test prep kit, and I’ll share more details about this later in the episode.

Their goal was to earn as many check marks as possible by the end of the week, and they earned those check marks by completing the activities that are listed.

The T stands for teacher check, and this is where I would go around and when I saw them really trying hard, and staying on task, and putting forth the effort that I expected, I gave them a check. So, this wasn’t an actual activity. It was more of a motivator for them. 

They were always really excited to get a checkmark in that section, but they had to earn it. If I walked around, and they were off task and slacking off, they wouldn’t get a checkmark.

The E stands for electronics, and these were review Boom Cards that they worked through. The nice thing about Boom Cards is they are self-checking. So, I did not have to grade these. What I would do is have them show me their score, and if they got a 75 or above, I would give them a checkmark. I was not going to give them a checkmark for 40%, but I was a little lenient just because there are more questions, and some of these are pretty challenging.

The A stands for at your seat, and these were worksheets that they did on their own at their seat, and they were all word problems because we needed to review those. 

The final letter, M, stood for math with a partner. These were also worksheets, but these were different because they had a column A for one person to complete, and then a column B for the other to complete. When they were finished, they would check over each other’s work to make sure it was correct. If they noticed their partner made a mistake, then they would work together to fix the mistake.

So, when they finished one of these worksheets, they brought it to me to check, and I had a set of answer keys that helped me do this really quickly, and I gave them a check if they either got them all right or if they missed one. 

If they missed more than one, then I wrote how many they missed like I would put minus two or minus three, and I would give it back to them. Once they returned it and it was correct, they received their check mark. And since I didn’t have small groups going on, that meant I was able to get all of the grading within the class period. 

The final piece of this is to decide what skills to put on the choice board, and this time I looked at what questions were in the red and the yellow. I also made sure that the skills I put on the choice board were considered the major work of the grade because those were the skills that were going to be covered more heavily. 

So, I included a lot of fraction concepts, computation, especially multiplication and division, a lot of word problems, and a little less of things like measurement or geometry that aren’t considered the major work of the grade.

So, that covers what the choice board looked like. Next, I want to share with you how I facilitated these activities and what a typical day looked like during this test prep week.

Again, we started with a quick whole group lesson on those tough skills that they struggled with on the practice test. After the lesson, they did a couple of pages out of their test prep workbook, and these pages aligned with our whole group lesson. So, if our whole group lesson was on interpreting remainders, I had them do a page on interpreting remainders in this workbook.

After they finished these workbook pages, they worked on their teamwork activity board. So, it was kind of like a first-do then-do setup. But they didn’t just choose any activity. It was a little more structured than that. They were assigned to one station per day, and they would rotate to a new station or a new letter each day.

So, if Monday they’re at the electronic station, that means they have four sets of Boom Cards to work through. Then on Tuesday, they’d move to the at your seat station, and they’d have four worksheets to work through. And then on Wednesday, they would be at the math with a partner station, and they’d have four worksheets to work through.

Thursday was a little more flexible. So, if they had a set of Boom Cards they didn’t finish or a worksheet they didn’t get to, they could work on those on Thursday. And then day five was our Glow Day Games, and this was not something that was a given. They had to earn it.

If they chose to not do anything throughout the week and slack off and cause problems, they would spend their Glow Day Games working on their activity board. But the good news is that I never had a student not earn the Glow Day Games. It really does become a motivator for them, and it’s such a fun way to celebrate. So, they had their mind on this the whole week.

I know there are a lot of fourth grade teachers listening, but if you don’t teach fourth grade and you’d like to use this teamwork activity board, I have a free and editable copy in the show notes. You can even use this during the school year. It doesn’t have to just be for test prep week.

However, if you are a fourth grade teacher, you are probably going to be covering the same topics that I mentioned throughout this episode, and this entire test prep kit is available in my TPT store. I will have that linked in the show notes as well. It includes all the printable and digital activities that I mentioned.

So, you get four days of PowerPoint lessons that are already made for you. You get four sets of test prep Boom Cards. You get all of the worksheets included for the partner math and at your seat, and you’ll also get the editable choice board that you can customize, along with a spreadsheet that you can type your student names into, and the letters actually move. So, you don’t have to change the student groups every day. You just move the E to the A and the A to the M and the M to the E.

I call this kit an all-inclusive kit because it really does include everything, and it was by far the most successful way I ever prepared my students for testing.

So, that takes care of the week before testing. Next week, I will share what we did on that last day, our Glow Day. You don’t want to miss this one because I’m going to share how we decorated our room, what games we played, and how we still used this day as review day, because it wasn’t all fun and games. They still did a lot of work. So, be sure to come back next week for part three.

And that means it is time for today’s Teaching Tip of the Week.

At this point in the year, you’re probably either struggling to come up with questions for your morning meeting or you’re just looking for something different. 

So, my tip for you today is to have your students do this. Have them come up with their own questions and lead your morning meeting. Post the schedule in your room so they know when their day is coming up, and I would give them at least a week’s notice so they have time to prepare. After that, you are all set for the month. You can sit back and relax and enjoy someone else leading the morning meeting for a change.

Speaking of sitting back and relaxing, I hope that’s exactly what you’re doing. Enjoy your spring break, whether it’s this week or next week, and I will see you next Tuesday for part three of our test prep series.