Test taking strategies

Before beginning any exam (CBA, STAAR, etc.) you should...

• Focus on any testing anxiety you may have

• Remain calm & know that you are CAPABLE of being successful

• Flip to the end to see how many pages the exam is

For reading passages, you should...

• Start reading straight away

• Skim through the passage for important information

• Read the last paragraph only

• Read through the questions first

While reading the passages, you should...

• Annotate (take notes) as you read

• Try to remember the important parts

• Read through it as quickly as possible so you don't forget

Annotate means to -

• Highlight information that seems important

• Take note of words you don't know the meaning of

• Summarize paragraphs in the margins

• Highlight parts of questions that stick out/seem important

What strategy do we use to analyze poetry?

• imagining what it looks like as you read

• S.W.I.F.T.T.

• Make up our own ideas of what the author is meaning

What should you do when there's a word you don't know while reading?

• Do your best without knowing

• Look it up

• Use context clues

• Guess

When a question asks about a specific sentence or paragraph, you should...

• Go off your memory

• Go back to specific paragraph/sentence

• Only look at your annotations from that paragraph/sentence

• Look at the paragraph/sentence before or after

Process of elimination means:

• Eenie, meenie, minie, moe...

• crossing out the obvious wrong answers

• summarizing answer choices

• Finding where they are in the passage

It's important to find the __________ of every paragraph.

• figurative language example

• beginning, middle, end

• main idea

When in doubt, make a(n) __________ !

• phone call

• bad decision

• quick guess

• educated guess