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Teaching Strategies That Prepare Students for High-Stakes Tests
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Teaching Strategies That Prepare Students for High-Stakes Tests



July 2008 | 104 pages | Corwin
Student scores on standardized tests are one of the leading measures of student achievement and educator accountability today. What this means is that teachers must know how to prepare their students with all the necessary skills for solid success on state exams. In this new handbook by award-winning educators Donna Walker Tileston and Sandra K. Darling, teachers will find a step-by-step guide to accomplishing that critical goal. In five concise chapters, the authors clarify and simplify for teachers the process of unpacking their own state standards, using a data base that aligns best practices to all of the state standards and ranks those instructional practices according to their effectiveness. Their text provides a model to help teachers determine what benchmarks really require students to know and be able to do at different grade levels. By the end of the book, educators will have a framework for how to teach so that lesson plans and assessments will map to the standards and benchmarks, with the goal of deeper learning and higher student achievement. The book includes ready-to-use strategies and a collection of reproducible templates, resources, bibliography, and index.á
 
List of Figures
 
Acknowledgments
 
About the Authors
 
Introduction
 
1. Zooming in on the Standards
The Forgotten Part of the Triangle

 
Meta-Analysis

 
Breaking Down Standards Into Manageable Parts

 
What Will Students Need to Know About the Standard?

 
What Will Students Need to Be Able to Do With the Knowledge?

 
At What Level Will Students Be Expected to Achieve?

 
In Summary

 
 
2. Identifying the Types of Knowledge
Using Benchmarks to Identify Tested Content

 
Unpacking the Standards and Benchmarks

 
Declarative Knowledge Strategy: Teaching Vocabulary

 
Procedural Knowledge Benchmarks

 
Procedural Knowledge Strategy: Heuristics

 
In Summary

 
 
3. Teaching and Assessing Declarative Knowledge Standards
Declarative Knowledge

 
The Process of Teaching Declarative Knowledge

 
Constructing Meaning

 
Activating Prior Knowledge

 
Using Semantic Mapping

 
Storing Declarative Information

 
Teaching Vocabulary

 
Diverse Learners and Vocabulary

 
Building Background Knowledge for Culturally Diverse Students

 
Providing Visual Representations and Kinesthetic Opportunities

 
Finding and Using Research on Best Practices

 
Formative and Summative Classroom Assessments of Declarative Knoweldge

 
In Summary

 
 
4. Teaching and Assessing Procedural Knowledge Standards
Identifying Procedural Knowledge, Standards, and Benchmarks

 
Teaching Procedural Knoweldge, Standards, and Benchmarks

 
Constructing Mental Models

 
Shaping

 
Automaticity

 
How Do We Assess Procedural Knowledge in the Classroom?

 
In Summary

 
 
5. Mapping Lessons to Standards
First Things, First

 
Levels of Understanding

 
Levels of Complexity

 
Mapping the Way

 
In Summary

 
 
Blackline Masters
 
References
 
Index

"Helps building and district-level administrators realize that they don’t have to abandon sound and effective instructional practices to prepare students for high-stakes tests."

Sheila Smith, Science Specialist
Jackson Public Schools, MS

"I encourage trainers to discuss this text and its applications with teachers to enhance the performance of students on state and national tests. This book meets a very specific need in classrooms.”

J-Petrina McCarty-Puhl, Teacher
Robert McQueen High School, Reno, NV

For instructors

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ISBN: 9781412949767
£23.99