One of the main questions we receive about any assessment we provide is...

How can I prepare my child to take this test?

A great tool to support you and your child are Practice Tests. You can choose to practice the Computer Adaptive Test (CAT), the Performance Task, the CAST Science Test, the CAA, and even the ELPAC!

The Practice Test is great at helping students feel more comfortable with the state test. Think about it this way; when you are about to give an important presentation at work, need to interview for a new position, or just want to get better at something new; practicing is the best way to be prepared. When you feel prepared, you feel more confident and comfortable with the task at hand.

My suggestion is always to use the Practice Test as an opportunity to get comfortable with the Testing Interface, not necessarily go through and answer all the questions. The CAASPP Testing Interface offers a variety of Universal Tools and Designated Supports for your child to try out. We'll learn more about those in our next newsletter!

If you would like to score your child, you can by using the Scoring Guides. You will need to score in the moment, meaning the student should not hit NEXT until you have had a chance to score the answer.

Your HST would be happy to walk you through the CAASPP Testing Interface at your LP Meeting, too!

Another helpful tool that is provided to practice the Performance Tasks is the SmART Annotated Response Tool. This gives exemplars of different writing prompts, similar to those on the SBAC, with a justification for the score the response received.

On your child's Student Score Report from last year's CAASPP, you were provided with your child's Writing Extended Response Score, which shows the scores for Purpose, Evidence/Elaboration, and Conventions. Please reach out to your HST to discuss how to use this data with the SmART Annotated Response Tool. Using this tool, and grade-level examples would be great for a discussion with your HST, as we move closer to the spring!

If you have a student in a non-testing grade, this tool can help you plan for the future by seeing what the rubrics and prompt-types your child may get assigned on the SBAC.

Lastly, if you have a student who has taken the SBAC tests before, the Starting Smarter website offers some insight into the Score Reports. It also links to conversation starters you can have with your HST about the results, the Be a Learning Hero website, and, of course the Practice Test itself.

The state also provides the CAASPP Content Explorer to help your student see questions similar to those on the CAASPP. These are broken down by specific standard, and are meant as a prep tool to give students an opportunity to get familiar with the types of questions they may see.