Information Age Education

How to Make Standardized Test Practice Fun: Warm-ups

January 19th, 2007

Every time that January rolls around, I start to think about the standardized tests that my students will be taking in a few months. Regardless of my opinion about the value and validity of standardized tests, they are still a part of the current educational paradigm. So what’s a teacher to do? Well, fortunately there are some easy things you can do that will help prepare your students while sharpening their critical thinking skills. For this post, I’m going to focus on things you can do for bell ringers or warm-ups.

What are “Distractors?”

A helpful teaching strategy is to explain the concept of “distractors.” Distractors are problems that do exactly what they sound like, they distract kids from the correct answers. The best way to teach about distractors is to have kids identify them. There a number of fun ways to learn about them that deepen conceptual understanding.

Write Multiple Choice Answers

Take a traditional warm-up problem and turn it into a multiple choice problem. The important thing is that the kids create the answers to the problems. I always specify which letter will be correct so that I can quickly scan if kids understand.

Ex. 1
Directions: Write answers to the following question. Let “C” be the correct answer. Make the other answers reflect common mistakes.
Which of the following states was not one of the original 13 colonies?
A.
B.
*C.
D.

Ex. 2
Directions: Write answers to the following question. Let “D” be the correct answer. Make the other answers reflect common mistakes.
Evaluate 15 - 2(3 + 1).
A.
B.
C.
*D.

Write an Appropriate Question to a Multiple Choice Response

On a warm-up, give four responses and specify the correct answer. Have the students create a question that is appropriate to what they are learning that would generate that response. You could reverse the first example above by having the students write a question instead of the answers.
Ex.
Directions: Write a question where “B” would be the correct answer.
Question:
A. New York
*B. Kansas
C. Maryland
D. Virginia

Note: There may be multiple correct questions for some problems, which opens up the possibility for a rich discussion. How fabulous is that?

Reverse Roles: Error Analysis

Have a multiple choice problem on the board with an answer circled, perhaps the wrong one. The students have to analyze each possible response and state why that was the correct or incorrect response. They get to play the teacher, which is a role they often wish they could fill.