MCA II Test-Taking Strategies for Reading
High stakes tests are stressful and challenging for many, if not most, of our students. Most of their anxiety can be overcome by having sound strategies for approaching tests. When students have a process to follow, they are more likely to be more confident test takers and earn higher scores.
The test strategies are bolded.
The italicized writing provides the rational for the use of these strategies.
1. Read the title and captions that introduce the text content to stimulate prior knowledge about the text topic.
Accessing prior knowledge stimulates thinking and facilitates engagement.
2. Rewrite each test question beginning with a question word: who, what, when, where, why, how, what.
Because the questions on the MCA II tend to be written in complicated ways, it is not unusual for students to misinterpret what is being asked. Taking time to determine precisely what is being asked helps students to overcome the obstacle of complicated question design.
When student expend energy to rewrite questions, those questions become mentally stored. When students read, the answers to the questions they store subconsciously become more evident to them.
(Warning: When students encounter answers to questions while they read, they should be not go back to answer the question at that time as it interrupts the flow of reading and impedes comprehension. Instead, teach students to mark the text in some way that indicates the importance of the information)
3. Exercise text-interaction skills when reading and interpreting the text.
Per paragraph or short section, students should reflect and take margin notes:
Interpret author’s intended messages: What does the author intend the reader to think, know, understand, or feel?
Progressively reflecting to interpret author’s intended meanings while reading a text significantly improves reading comprehension by helping students see how the parts are related to each other and to the whole text.
Record questions: Student should continually ask and record questions they have while reading.
Questioning aids engagement and is an important tool for comprehension. Questioning not only help students reflect on the meanings inherent in text, but provides teachers with information to help determine and respond to students’ needs and plan instruction.
4. Answer the questions.
Identify the questions as literal (“right there”) or inferential (“jump in thought”)
Eliminate each incorrect answer choice using sound reasoning.
Go back to the text and find and identify the direct answer in the text for literal questions and find evidence for inferential questions.
Select the best answer.
The answer choices are designed in a way that readers can be easily tricked into selecting the wrong answer, as all answers are plausible but only one answer is the best choice. Therefore, eliminating the wrong answers is essential to determining the best answer. Finding evidence in the text helps ensure that the answer selected is indeed the best choice.
CONSIDERATIONS FOR INSTRUCTION
AUTHOR
The author and information available about the author
The author’s point-of-view
The author’s purpose for writing
The author’s message to the reader
Possible extensions of point-of-view, purposes, messages and meanings
EX. Which of the following statements would the author most likely agree
with?
EVIDENCE
Types of evidence
Use of evidence in supporting particular points
Credibility of evidence
Fallacies
Generalizations
Statistics
Facts
Opinions
Anecdotes
ARGUMENT / LOGIC
The organization of ideas
Reasoning
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Represented in poetry
Likely to be presented in the informational text passages on the MCA II Reading and GRAD tests.
CONSTRUCTED RESPONSE
Although constructed response in no longer a part of the MCAII test, Write-to-Learn constructive response activities are valuable in helping students develop their conceptual understandings and are a useful formative assessment tool.