Teaching your homeschool kid how to take a test

Every homeschool Mom is afraid of their child having gaps. What if my child doesn’t know X? One thing I hadn’t realized until recently is test-taking is a skill. You have to teach your child how to take a test. I knew that from teaching. I mean half of the 3rd grade in Texas is learning how to take the standardized test. The same thing applies to homeschooling. I have to teach them how to take a test.

{Disclosure: I received a free copy of Paradigm Accelerated curriculum and was compensated for my time, all opinions are my own}

Set your child up to pass before they take the test

A couple of things that will guarantee your child will pass the test.

1. Buy a good science curriculum, like oh say… Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum Basic Science Mysteries (I chose this one because my son is a huge fan of mysteries).  Choose one that is well laid out and ideally has important terms bolded.
2. Complete all assignments.  This may seem like an obvious statement, but I’ve been known to skip assignments from time to time if I didn’t see the point.
3. Take good notes.  If you’re not sure how check out how to take notes.

Going back to number 2 on that list.  At first, we were not completing the activities because we’ll just take the quiz right after, so why bother with that?  Well, you do things like that because kids need repetition to learn.

(Side point unrelated to teaching a kid how to take a test, these lessons were just the right length for us 2-5 pages depending on the lesson, and they led us into lots of side discussions and reminders of when we studied anatomy last year, and the kids were very interested in the mystery)

This is part of the Homeschool How-To Series, don’t miss out on that.

Give your kids tools to remember what they learned

My kids are active learners.  So we took the information from the text and made it into motions.  They remembered the parts of the brain because we came up with hand motions.  Very silly motions and simple motions, but it sure helped them remember.

I actually need to write a whole post on how to study because I have way too much to tell.

(Side note, it was incredibly freeing to get Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum and know I could just set the kids free and they could complete it 100% on their own in a few years.  I’ve been looking for a homeschool curriculum that is independent for high school years to encourage independent learning)

(Second side note, check out the Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum youtube channel for some great videos to support their curriculum.  They’re also sharing cool stuff on their twitter feed)

(Final side note, for now, they’re revising their curriculum to include QR codes to let students access extra content from their phone, how cool is that?  Also, think of the potential for extended learning.)

All right now into the details of teaching your kids how to take a test.

Teaching your kids how to take a test

Almost every test has matching, and that can be intimidating.  Especially when the list of matching is almost 20 long.  The above sample is only 5, but another section on the Paradigm Science test had about 15 words to match.

Here are a few important things to do for any type of questions

1. Answer the easy questions to narrow down the field.
2. Eliminate obviously wrong answers.
3. Look for context clues, articles, verb agreement can help you figure out the right answer.
4. If you are able to, read it out loud (this especially helps my daughter).

As you can see in our example up above we went through and answered the questions they knew with no trouble and that narrowed down answers enough to let the kids figure out the ones they weren’t sure of.

My daughter sees fill in the blank and freezes because she thinks she can’t do it.  But if you apply the tips for matching first it can quickly narrow down answers.

But you can follow all of these tips and still not be sure if you’ve got the right answer, so sometimes you…

GUESS!

You may not be able to tell, but that blank answer the arrow is pointing at originally said “wellness” because the kids thought that might be the answer.  Then they read the next question and realized it was wrong.

Sometimes you need to try out an answer before finding the right one.  Kids need to learn it’s okay to guess as long as you’re willing to change your answer.

Update, reading this three years later, my kids are much more confident with fill in the blanks because we’ve been applying these tools. Their Texas history test this year has fill in the blank questions with no word bank and they now confidently apply their answers.

How to take a test with multiple choice

This will be your most common test type, especially for standardized testing.  So I was very glad Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum included a wide variety of multiple-choice questions.

Here’s what I learned back when I was learning how to take a test and that I’ve taught my kids.

1. Read the question carefully and underline key words.
2. Cross out obviously wrong answers.
3. Look for clues in the question, is there an article or a verb that only agrees with one answer?
4. Go with your gut instinct, you often know the right answer without thinking about it.

How to take a test with true/false

True/false questions are most likely to trip you up in a test, or they trip me up.  Here are some common tips to beat that.

1. Look for words like “always” or “never,” absolutes are almost always false.
2. Read carefully for words that change the meaning subtly.  Small words can change it from true to false, think how easy it would be to miss the word “not” in a long sentence.
3. If you’re not sure skip it and finish the section then come back.
4. At the end sometimes it works best to answer quickly because if you over think it you’ll end up giving the wrong answer.

One last thing on taking a test.

Provide lots of opportunities to practice how to take a test

If the first time your child sees a test is when it’s do or die, they will die.  You’ve set your child up to fail.  But if you’ve been giving them lots of chances to try out tests when it’s not a big deal they won’t freak out.

Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum has lots of quizzes, one after every section (so that’s 3 quizzes before the test).  Their quizzes are made in the same style as the tests, so if your child takes the quiz every day by the time they get to the lesson test they will pass with flying colors, no worries whatsoever.

They’ll be used to the style and how it works, and it will not be scary.

Since this is a science curriculum, here’s a few more science ideas

One last thing on Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum

Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum offers these discounts:

40% off for

• homeschool groups (minimum purchase $1000)
• single parents

20%  off for

• ministry families
• military families
• farmers and ranchers
• first responders
• foster parents

Call Paradigm at 325-649-0976 for a discount code to use during the checkout process if you fit into one of these categories.

(Very last side note, I’m very impressed by a company that doesn’t just say it supports single parents or military or any of those categories up above, but puts their money where their mouth is.  My kids are young for most of their curriculum, but I’m storing away their website for when they get older.  I like the idea of something they can complete on their own, that is my ULTIMATE goal in homeschooling, creating independent learners, and this curriculum encourages that, but don’t just take my word for that.)

Originally published in 2015 solely putting this here for when I try to find a picture. 🙂