Practicing for Literature Assessments gives your students sample test situations for close-reading of literature and on-demand writing in response. These testing environments are based upon similar tasks on the assessments for the new standards. You can print this unit out for students to work with directly. You can also present this unit right from your interactive whiteboard.
Close-Reading Practice Assessments
Close-reading activities help students practice the following skills:
- Reading a story and answering questions about character, conflict, and theme
- Reading a poem about a similar topic and answering questions about the sound (rhythm, rhyme, repetition) and the meaning (imagery, metaphor, theme) of the poem
On-Demand Writing Strategies
On-demand writing activities help students practice these skills:
- Analyzing writing prompts to understand the purpose, audience, subject, and type of writing
- Writing a focus statement and listing supporting details to include in a response
- Writing a paragraph response to one writing prompt and an essay response to another prompt.
- Citing evidence from the story and poem read previously
- Writing a creative response in the style of the original story
- Using a rubric to evaluate the written responses