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PSSA: Test Taking Strats. Knowledge + Application + MOTIVATION = Performance. Students begin losing “efficiency” about 20 minutes into test taking. Frequent mental/ physical breaks which can be initiated by drinking water and/or eating a mint, etc can help to “reset” concentration.
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Knowledge • + • Application • + • MOTIVATION • = • Performance
Students begin losing “efficiency” about 20 minutes into test taking. • Frequent mental/ physical breaks which can be initiated by drinking water and/or eating a mint, etc can help to “reset” concentration.
On the PSSA exams, multiple choice responses consist of the following: • 1 slash and burn answer, which is clearly wrong. • 2 responses which serve as distractors. • 1 correct answer.
Distracters sometimes play on students’ tendencies not to read the entire question • Distracters most often occur at choice “A”. • The next most likely distracter choice is “D”. • Therefore, in a true guessing scenario, selecting either B or C will yield the best results.
About 22% of questions missed result from students not reading the entire question. • School districts who have eliminated answers misread due to improper erasing have seen scores increase by 17% • (we need better erasers)
Open-Ended Responses • Are graded in an average of forty-give seconds. • Do not require complete sentences. • May include bullets, numbers, quotations (even without quotes on them).
Open-Ended Responses • Encourage students, even if writing in complete sentences, to label the parts of their answer. • This helps the graders quickly identify that each part of the question has been answered. • This generally results in higher scores. • Extra examples help: if two examples are correct and a third is not, the student isn’t punished.