~First Day to Test Day (3-12) - Presented by Kristina Smekens!

A road map to accelerate student learning and prepare for standardized tests. Strategies shared during this workshop mirror the 3-12 grade-level expectations outlined within the reading and writing standards for College & Career Readiness.

Workshop Outline

Target the thinking that students must execute when reading any text.

• Demystify the inference process in order to answer comprehension questions about complex texts.
• Attack questions with test-taking tips to support finding the “best” and “most likely” answers.

Reveal to students that their thinking must also be communicated in writing.

• Define the ingredients to a strong constructed response.
• Propel students beyond simply stating evidence to explaining it.

Advance students beyond making single-text inferences to generating multi-text syntheses.

• Identify a step-by-step process for reading and annotating multiple texts in one sitting.
• Dissect how readers integrate ideas learned from multiple sources to generate a new thought or synthesis.

Raise the rigor to reading multiple texts and composing extended responses—all in one sitting.

• Provide explicit instruction on academic vocabulary to support students in decoding and responding to prompts.
• Build on the students' knowledge of short constructed responses to generate long, extended responses.