What Every Middle School Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Tests: (From Someone Who Has Written Them)

by Charles Fuhrken

Overview

Tests require a special kind of savvy, a kind of critical thinking and knowledge application that is not always a part of classroom reading experiences. Who better to teach you how to prepare your students for reading tests than someone who has written them? Charles Fuhrken has spent years working with several major testing companies and contributing to the reading assessments of various testing programs. What he's learned about testing can help teachers who are interested in teaching effective reading strategies as well as preparing students for reading tests.

What Every Middle School Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Tests (From Someone Who Has Written Them) offers extensive, practical strategies to help students perform well on test day. This ready-to-use, easy-to-understand resource provides a wealth of information about reading tests, including high-quality preparation materials, samples of the most frequently assessed reading standards, and engaging core-reading activities. Charles takes the mystery out of reading tests; he explains how students can learn the language of tests and apply their knowledge of reading to standardized tests.

In addition to providing information about reading tests that will help students feel prepared and confident on test day, What Every Middle School Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Tests provides a wealth of resources that can be incorporated into a teacher's everyday reading work, including vocabulary development, literary techniques, interpretation, comprehension, and more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781571108852
Publisher:	Stenhouse Publishers
Publication date:	12/28/2011
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

About the Author

Growing up in a small town in Texas, Charles knew early on that he wanted a career in education. When his parents bought him a monstrous chalkboard one year, he officially opened a school in his bedroom. His regular students were the three Linebarger girls who lived next door. "I subjected them to endless hours of cursive handwriting practice," he admits.

His enthusiasm for teaching meant that he was a serious student, but standardized tests posed challenges for him. "I always did well, but I would miss a few questions each time because I would argue that more than one option was correct." His other challenge was his frustration with the content of reading tests. "I wasted a lot of testing time off-task, gazing out the windows if I could, and wondering 'Who writes this stuff? It's sooo boooring.'"

Not then, and not even years later, did he think that one day he would be responsible for writing the content of reading and writing assessments. But in his master's program, while earning a degree in English and taking a course in education, Charles became a freelance writer of passages and items for a test publisher. Later, after a few years of teaching in public schools and the college level, Charles entered the assessment world on a full-time basis as a reading and writing test specialist.

For the past twelve years, Charles has worked in assessment for three major test publishers and on testing programs for many states, including California, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia, as well as on norm-referenced achievement tests such as Stanford and Metropolitan. "Through the years, from talking to teaching in various arenas, I came to understand that teachers want and deserve to be informed about tests, but currently they feel either uninformed or misinformed."

After completing a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction at the University of Texas at Austin, Charles began writing down everything he could think of to help teachers who are preparing students for their state's reading test. The results are his two books: What Every Elementary Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Tests (From Someone Who Has Written Them) and What Every Middle School Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Tests.

Charles lives in Austin, Texas, and likes to travel when he can sneak away. His vice is spending too much money on children's and young adult books. His favorites are "everything ever written by Deborah Wiles, Jon Scieszka, Sharon Creech, Jeff Kinney, and Kate DiCamillo." He justifies the hobby by adding, "I wasn't much of a reader when I was young. It was the '70s and the choices were pitiful by today's standards. I think I'm trying to make up for it now." Charles also enjoys meeting stalking his favorite authors at professional conferences.

Editorial Reviews

In this teacher resource book, Charles Fuhrken, a test developer who has helped write assessment tests for several states, offers his inside knowledge about the structure of middle school reading assessment tests and strategies to help students and teachers prepare for them. Four main sections cover basic test lexicon; commonly assessed reading standards (such as vocabulary development and literary techniques); sample passages and test items with tips alongside; and a compilation of resources and reading activities to use in the classroom. Appendices provide charts and reproducibles for these activities. Fuhrken writes in a clear, straightforward manner, much like the test items he develops. By providing examples and references when discussing the field of education, he makes his work accessible to educators with varying degrees of experience. Though teachers may criticize such an overt "teaching to the test" approach, Fuhrken acknowledges that, regardless of one's stance on the efficacy of assessment tests, they are pervasive in today's schools, and knowledge is power for teachers and students alike. His peeks behind the curtain of test item construction serve to enlighten and empower both groups; as he states, "Confidence comes as a result of a deep awareness of test formats, test language, test tasks, test logic, and other test features..." Teacher guidance will be required for middle school students to find this book's information palatable and useful; middle school libraries with professional collections and public libraries with parent/teacher collections will want to make sure to purchase it. Reviewer: Rebecca O'Neil

VOYA - Rebecca O'Neil