1. PSSA: Test Taking Strats

2. Knowledge +
Application
MOTIVATION =
Performance

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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)

7. 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).

8. 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.