Thursday, March 18, 2010
End of Year Review
As the time for SOL testing is fast approaching and we are about to head into review full throttle, I thought I would share one of my favorite review techniques. My previous teammate and I compiled a 3-ring binder containing all of the released items from previous years. We made overhead transparencies for all of them and then catalogued them by SOL. This was a little tedious the first time around, but after the major work is done it's not so bad to add the new test each year. We then use these transparencies as the basis for our daily review in the 3 weeks prior to testing. Most of the time I will put the question up and have the students answer it on their own and then present the answer to me before I go over the question. This works well because it helps them to understand the "language of the SOL's" as well as gives me the opportunity to discuss test-taking strategies and common distractor answer choices. The released test items are a really great resource and I highly recommend that everyone uses them!
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I had a lot of improvement last year by drilling with SOL released questions and similar questions. I like your idea of organizing them. I'm fortunate in that I don't have to use transparencies. We have ceiling projectors connected to our computer so I can have them show up on the screen easily and use our interwrite software to "write" on the screen.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you on the SOL review. At this time my team and I look at the objectives that individual students are weak in and zoom in on those students. We then pull those objectives from previous tests after we remediate with the students and tests them. The students usually do well on them after we re-teach that particular objective. This really helps them because it has the SOL language.
ReplyDeleteAlmarie Ferguson.
I, too, use released tests for SOL review. However, I never thought of taking them apart and separating them by SOL. I will definitely try that. Thanks!
ReplyDeletePatty Ptucha
You are right on target. Our administration emphasizes using the released items, and has even had us all write what we call "Look-a-likes", questions that have the same format as released items. We have a central website where they are posted in our school system that we use to pull the "Look-a-likes from. I use them for review everyday in our opening work.
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