Test-Taking Tips for Middle School Math

As the testing season is upon us, I wanted to share some test-taking tips for student success.

Build Reading Stamina

First, and foremost, we must build reading stamina, working in conjunction with our coworkers, especially in the RELA department. Standardized test questions are lengthy and often require students to complete multiple steps to arrive at their answers. In combination with the problems being wordier, our students often shut down before attempting the question. Building reading stamina can help our students to give each problem a fighting shot.

Expose Students to Word Problems

Students need to be exposed to a variety of word problems and not just at the end of a chapter/unit. I love launching lessons with thinking tasks or word problems where students can make sense of the concept and we can debrief. Exposing students to numberless word problems, one-step word problems, and multistep problems is also important as students need to be ready for all of these types of scenarios on standardized testing.

Make Sense of Word Problems

I’ve tried using cutesy acronyms like CUBES to help students make sense of word problems but have found little success. I like to have students make sense of word problems by completing the following steps:

1. Understand
2. Plan
3. Solve
4. Check

I use weekly maintenance spiral review bell ringers daily to practice making sense of word problems. Listing known information from problems is important and often helps students to decipher the problem and how to proceed with solving it. Grab my poster set here that details each step of the word problem process!

Explicitly Teach Word Problem Strategies

I recently asked my students what word problem strategies they used, and my students couldn’t really tell me any. This is when it dawned on me that students need to be explicitly taught what word problem strategies are and taught explicitly how to use each strategy. Therefore, I created a resource that focuses on ten common word problem strategies to model for students. Grab the word problem strategies organizer here.

Encourage a Growth Mindset & Perseverance

At the end of the day, we know the success of our students on standardized tests boils down to students having a growth mindset and being able to persevere through difficult problems. As teachers, we need to model and encourage these behaviors all year. In addition, I love giving students personalized notes of encouragement before or during standardized testing to remind them that they got this. Grab my personalized positive testing notes here.

Concluding Thoughts

In conclusion, testing can be a stressful time for students and teachers alike. We are not defined by our test scores. Feel free to share any test-taking tips you find helpful below.