It’s that time of year again; it’s SBAC season. For a lot of educators, it’s an overwhelming and disruptive time of year. Your students often pick up on those feelings, which doesn’t help when it comes to taking the SBAC. To help you out during this stressful time of year, we’ve come up with a few tips to help your students prepare for testing season.

A few weeks before SBAC

Familiarize students with technology

You want to make sure your students have plenty of time on the computers so that they can become familiar with them before they take the test. While this sounds like a moot point, computer errors account for a fair number of mistakes on the SBAC. So, being familiar with the technology used during the test could make a difference in your students’ scores. For younger students, practicing dragging and dropping is a big help. 

Differentiate Instruction

Work with students one-on-one or in small groups to fill in gaps. If you don’t have time to work one-on-one with all students, partner students up. Peer tutoring helps because one student is able to show their understanding of the concept by verbally expressing their thought process and the other student is able to have the concept reinforced by their peer.

Work with Parents

Let parents know what’s going on in school so that they can be informed and can help their student at home. Parents want to know what’s happening at school and will appreciate a heads up that testing season is approaching. Give parents tips for how they can support their students at home during SBAC season.

Right Before SBAC

Remind students to slow down

Remind students to slow down and take their time. Not only will this help ease their nerves but it will also encourage students to read questions thoroughly. Questions on the SBAC are tricky and students often answer incorrectly because they did not read the question thoroughly.

Remind students to do their best

Remind students that the test they are going to take is tricky and that they should do their best. It’s also best to remind students that this test will not be graded and is just used to show you what they have learned this year. Reminding students that the test is meant to trick them will help some of them stay alert, and telling them the test won’t be graded will help put others at ease.

Remind students to relax

At the end of the day, your students have learned all they need to know for this test during the course of the school year. A few last minute test prep strategies may help, here and there, but overall your students are prepared for this test and there is no reason to stress.

For more information on how Sokikom can help your students prepare for SBAC, request a demo.