"Data-driven school reform" emphasizes the idea that if teachers analyze the kinds of questions students miss on standardized reading comprehension tests, and then give students lots of practice with such items, they will end up with higher test scores. This approach is likely to be popular with the new Partnership for Assessment of…

By viewing standardized reading tests as a unique genre that could be taught, the author designed a two-week genre study for her reading workshop. The article describes how she planned, taught, and reflected on the unit. This genre study resolved some of the dilemmas she faced around preparing students for mandated testing. (Contains 1 table and 2…

Discusses materials for middle grade and high school learners. Explains useful resources for teaching struggling writers. Details a publishing tool, a reading comprehension assessment, and a Scholastic Assessment Tests (SAT) preparation text. (PM)

What can teachers do in their classrooms to help students prepare for a high-stakes, standardized, multiple-choice reading test without sacrificing what they know to be best practice? Decreasing class sizes or other solutions that require substantial changes in school finance are not usually realistic options. This article outlines five…

Describes research about and teaching techniques for test-taking skills. (MKM)

Notes the problem that comprehension questions that claim to assess students' skills in finding main ideas may in fact be measuring their knowledge of identifying the topic of a passage. (JC)

Discusses test-taking skills and their application to tests of reading achievement. Presents a rationale for teaching these skills, lists a comprehensive set of skills relevant to standardized reading tests, and offers suggestions for teaching the skills and helping children use them. (FL)

Describes an action approach to teaching reading to black children which matches a black learning style. (MKM)

Provides suggestions and guidance to help students who are good readers, but have low self-efficacy for taking reading tests. Discusses four sources of self-efficacy: enactive mastery; vicarious experiences; verbal persuasion; and physiological/affective state. Concludes that these four sources provide a framework for developing and evaluating…

Concludes that teaching fourth- and fifth-grade children to ask themselves questions about key points in a story significantly improved their performance on tests about story content. (FL)

Teachers today face increasing demands to ensure their students achieve high levels of literacy. They may feel overwhelmed by the challenges of teaching reading comprehension strategies that foster the integration, interpretation, critique, and evaluation of text ideas. The challenges are compounded because students of diverse backgrounds often…