Teach them as much content and as much vocabulary as possible. Reading comprehension tests are actually knowledge tests in disguise. See the famous baseball reading comprehension study.
I’m not familiar with that study - I’ll have to look into it. Because I’ve always learned and had the understanding that standardized tests test reading more than anything else, which is limiting and an unfair measure of history knowledge for our students who don’t read well. (Not to downplay the importance of reading but to be transparent about what we are testing)
Reading comprehension essentially boils down to decoding skills + vocabulary (i.e., assuming decoding has been largely mastered, the limiting factor is word knowledge.) A kid who doesn’t know what “factor,” “nomadic,” and “societies” mean will never understand a question like that.
A lot of this is trying to target their literacy by teaching vocabulary and forcing them to read. Don’t forget about other things you could teach that can make up for some of those questions they will miss. Make sure they can read political cartoons, infographic questions, maps. My students have difficulties with all these in 9th grade world history. I choose to focus on those things I just listed as that’s the material they will engage with a lot in social media, teaching them how to read memes and other pictures is very helpful. I also push assignments that increase literacy, but some have such a deficiency there that an altered focus may be more helpful to get them to pass the test.
I definitely like this idea of honing skills in other forms of analysis. And I try to do it too. I do wish our kids could read better though. Thanks for the suggestions!
Totally get where you're coming from. The phrasing of standardized test questions frustrates me to no end! I have two approaches, neither of them perfect but they might help.
I try to write a lot of my own prompts. But first, I created a bank of prompts from standardized tests I know they need to take. Each time I write a prompt, I try to model it off of the common phrasings they'll see in these prompts but still meet students halfway (for your example, maybe "which factor is the most important reason why nomadic societies travelled frequently?"). Not sure if relevant to you, but this approach has also helped me with exposing my students to the skill of parsing out the PARCC-style informational writing prompts that are like four or five sentences long, but only one sentence matters. By now my students get that they can largely ignore sentences like "You have read two texts about elephants" or "Be sure to use evidence from both sources." Sentences that just add to their reading and testing fatigue.
Another approach -- before beginning to write their response, quiz them quickly on what the prompt means. As in, show them the prompt and offer three multiple choice for how to properly phrase the prompt "in their own words." Once they get it right -- tell them to start writing! And if you're using something like nearpod or another method to get independent responses from all your students, you can then see who you might need to pull aside to discuss the prompt with further. Maybe after a couple weeks/months of that you can scaffold it up to them coming up with the rephrase themselves.
I'll be checking this thread for others' ideas, too! Great topic!
These are two awesome ideas, thank you! Both are scaffolding in ways I hadn’t thought of. I like the idea of providing options first and then slowly building students to the point where they can write the question stem on their own. Also writing them halfway and slowly making it harder is a great way for them to learn the skill without even realizing it. Great suggestions that I’ll definitely try
Try to mix in to your class activities questions that are similar in wording so they will be familiar. If you know they're going to be asked things like "Which factor" then be sure they've seen it and had you walk them through breaking it down before seeing it on the test. They won't be able to do it on their own on the test without plenty of practice beforehand in a low-stakes setting and teacher support.
After teaching for over 20 years I can confidently say that analyzing "most missed questions" will ALWAYS get you some of the "All of the following EXCEPT" and double-negative answers and questions involving diagrams like 3-circle Venns. They have to grapple with these things before test day.
Thank you! Yes I definitely need to do some more analysis of the released tests in terms of the way they word things so I can use that throughout the semester
CAIE puts emphasis on teaching command words: assess, compare, contrast, discuss, evaluate and explain. I find this useful, as students then know what is expected of the question. As compared to other subjects, history has very few. Yet, there is no reason you can't extend this out and include: effect, impact, factor etc.
Teach them as much content and as much vocabulary as possible. Reading comprehension tests are actually knowledge tests in disguise. See the famous baseball reading comprehension study.
I’m not familiar with that study - I’ll have to look into it. Because I’ve always learned and had the understanding that standardized tests test reading more than anything else, which is limiting and an unfair measure of history knowledge for our students who don’t read well. (Not to downplay the importance of reading but to be transparent about what we are testing)
See also Natalie Wexler's presentions on YouTube.
Reading comprehension essentially boils down to decoding skills + vocabulary (i.e., assuming decoding has been largely mastered, the limiting factor is word knowledge.) A kid who doesn’t know what “factor,” “nomadic,” and “societies” mean will never understand a question like that.
A lot of this is trying to target their literacy by teaching vocabulary and forcing them to read. Don’t forget about other things you could teach that can make up for some of those questions they will miss. Make sure they can read political cartoons, infographic questions, maps. My students have difficulties with all these in 9th grade world history. I choose to focus on those things I just listed as that’s the material they will engage with a lot in social media, teaching them how to read memes and other pictures is very helpful. I also push assignments that increase literacy, but some have such a deficiency there that an altered focus may be more helpful to get them to pass the test.
I definitely like this idea of honing skills in other forms of analysis. And I try to do it too. I do wish our kids could read better though. Thanks for the suggestions!
Totally get where you're coming from. The phrasing of standardized test questions frustrates me to no end! I have two approaches, neither of them perfect but they might help. I try to write a lot of my own prompts. But first, I created a bank of prompts from standardized tests I know they need to take. Each time I write a prompt, I try to model it off of the common phrasings they'll see in these prompts but still meet students halfway (for your example, maybe "which factor is the most important reason why nomadic societies travelled frequently?"). Not sure if relevant to you, but this approach has also helped me with exposing my students to the skill of parsing out the PARCC-style informational writing prompts that are like four or five sentences long, but only one sentence matters. By now my students get that they can largely ignore sentences like "You have read two texts about elephants" or "Be sure to use evidence from both sources." Sentences that just add to their reading and testing fatigue. Another approach -- before beginning to write their response, quiz them quickly on what the prompt means. As in, show them the prompt and offer three multiple choice for how to properly phrase the prompt "in their own words." Once they get it right -- tell them to start writing! And if you're using something like nearpod or another method to get independent responses from all your students, you can then see who you might need to pull aside to discuss the prompt with further. Maybe after a couple weeks/months of that you can scaffold it up to them coming up with the rephrase themselves. I'll be checking this thread for others' ideas, too! Great topic!
These are two awesome ideas, thank you! Both are scaffolding in ways I hadn’t thought of. I like the idea of providing options first and then slowly building students to the point where they can write the question stem on their own. Also writing them halfway and slowly making it harder is a great way for them to learn the skill without even realizing it. Great suggestions that I’ll definitely try
Try to mix in to your class activities questions that are similar in wording so they will be familiar. If you know they're going to be asked things like "Which factor" then be sure they've seen it and had you walk them through breaking it down before seeing it on the test. They won't be able to do it on their own on the test without plenty of practice beforehand in a low-stakes setting and teacher support. After teaching for over 20 years I can confidently say that analyzing "most missed questions" will ALWAYS get you some of the "All of the following EXCEPT" and double-negative answers and questions involving diagrams like 3-circle Venns. They have to grapple with these things before test day.
Thank you! Yes I definitely need to do some more analysis of the released tests in terms of the way they word things so I can use that throughout the semester
CAIE puts emphasis on teaching command words: assess, compare, contrast, discuss, evaluate and explain. I find this useful, as students then know what is expected of the question. As compared to other subjects, history has very few. Yet, there is no reason you can't extend this out and include: effect, impact, factor etc.