Testing as a Genre Unit: 12 Lessons, Practice Tests, Slideshow Lesson Companion

End testing anxiety by empowering your students with the tools they need to be successful! This 12 session unit for grades 3-5 will help prepare your students for success with standardized reading tests.

Standardized testing isn’t going anywhere soon. Any quality teacher knows that we don’t “teach to the test”, however, teaching a child how to test is imperative! These skills can not only help students reach success with standardized testing and/or college prep or placement tests, but also alleviate testing anxiety!

The Testing as a Genre Unit is made up of 12 scripted lessons to teach test taking strategies as well as techniques focused on the various genres students are exposed to in a testing setting. This unit includes the use of mentor texts to model the thinking that takes place during a reading test. This unit also provides student practice.

These 12 sessions can be easily taught as a standalone unit, or implemented into current genre studies or units and practiced over the course of the school year.

Zip file contains

-68 page pdf manual

-104 slide powerpoint or google slides as a companion to each lesson (created in Google slides, easily uploadable to Google drive and editable

*Each lesson includes

-teacher modeling through scripted think aloud examples

-partner discussions

-whole group, partner, and individual practice

-blackline masters of test prep style questions for each mentor text (answer key included)

*Sessions 1-3 focus on the behaviors and strategies used by successful reading test takers through the use of two nonfiction text written by the author of this unit (included in the lesson plans). Sessions 4-12 implement those testing strategies and practices into specific genres.

*The 12 sessions include test practice with the following genres

-nonfiction: biography (2), expository (2), functional (2)

-fiction: realistic fiction, fantasy, folktales, poetry, poetry comparison

**Includes the use of the follow mentor texts:

Session 4: Rolling in the Aisles: Kids Pick the Funniest Poems by Bruce Lansky

Session 5: One Big Rain: Poems for Every Season compiled by Rita Gary

Session 6: Helen Keller: An Inspiring Life by Carol Ghiglieri

Session 7: Gurgles and Growls: Learning About your Stomach by Pamela Hill Nettleton

Session 8: The Potato Chip Champ by Maria Dismondy

Session 9: Red Riding Hood, retold by James Marshall

Session 10: Flora’s Very Windy Day by Jeanne Birdsall