Powerful Powerpoints — State Testing Time again

There’s a downloadable PowerPoint Presentation at the end of this post.

Yep, that’s right — state testing time again. And however you approach your version of “drill and practice,” it’s always helpful to have a supply of information at hand. For myself, I always find it troublesome deciding which questions will get the most attention on the state test. one year I noticed a good number of questions about sentence types. Another year I noticed that the test weighed heavily on knowledge MLA Writing Style, and therefore there were tens of questions about Bibliographies (even though bibliography isn’t necessarily the most used or usable citation reference). Some grade level tests focus on arcane language usage such as the Gerund — which would be a great name for a heavy metal band — and sometimes the questions focus on general minutiae such as articles, prepositional phrases, antecedents, direct objects, and all the other pablum we english teachers find so exciting.

What worries me most is that I haven’t prepared the students adequately for the test — I don’t teach general minutiae. I don’t teach too scattershot. I try to keep a focus at all times, and that focus generally lands on one spot. State testing reminds me that I’ve got to remind the students about everything they’ve learned this year, as well as what they’ve learned in prior years (because that stuff shows up on the test as well). But I don’t have those materials at hand, and I rarely have the opportunity to work together some magical answer to teaching all that stuff in a single session.

Thanks god a I found a CD chock full of powerpoints directed toward our state tests. Thank god they were written by someone higher up than me.

Below are a few screenshots of this powerpoint.

Slide 1

This first slide shows you (and the students) that you have 100 questions for them. They’re all based in the language portion of our state test. The teacher clicks on a number — you can choose to flow through the questions in numerical order or you may just jump all over the place; feel free to do whatever you’d like — and the question appears:

Slide 2

As you can see, the question itself is a little tricky. The wording is a little ambiguous, and requires the students get into that test-thinking-mode. Notice the marker in the top right corner — it’s a hint toward the question type. Most tests hint toward the overall goal of each exercise, and this powerpoint does the same. It’s worth pointing this out to the students.

For my classes I’ll be playing with teams. I’ll give one team the opportunity to answer this question. if they answer incorrectly, however, I’ll have to move to the next team and the next team until the question is answered correctly. When it is answered correctly, I’ll show them the answer:

Slide 3

If you knew the answer to this question, give yourself a pat on the back.

This powerpoint was generated for the state of Idaho. Hopefully it’ll meet your standards. If not, feel free to change the questions and answers to meet your needs.

And if you’d like to download this powerpoint please click here

The cool thing about that link right above…you can preview the document. You can actually click through the powerpoint to see if it’s worth downloading. Go ahead and save yourself 500k.