Middle of the Year READING Benchmark

This Thursday is our Reading benchmark.  This benchmark will have three different stories.  One fictional, one non-fiction, and one folktale.  I will NOT be able to read any of the content on the test to the students.  On the Beginning of the year, I read the whole story to them before they answered the questions.  This will be totally different, because they will have to read it themselves and comprehend what they have read.

There will be twenty questions total on this test. About 6-7 questions per story.  Having 20 questions definitely does not leave lots of room for error.  

We have been working all last week on our strategies, and HOW to implement our strategies when answering questions. Somethings i have let the kids know that they should do when answering any questions pertaining to a passage are:

1. Read the passage once through.  

2. Look at, but don't answer the questions

3. Read the passage once more with the stories questions sin mind.

4. Answer the questions, by LOOKING BACK INTO THE STORY

****this is a step that they skip because it takes a little longer...but I do notice that when they use this strategy, they do much better!

5. Prove your answer by highlighting or underlining the answers within the text.

6. Always pick the very BEST answer.

7. CHECK YOUR WORK.

We also have lots of anchor charts in our room to help with some of the content topics that will be tested.  These are the topics:

• Describing main characters
• Using context clues to know what a word means, or the synonym or antonym of a word/ Vocabulary
• Establishing the authors purpose for writing the story
• Retelling the story
• Inferencing
• Order of events
• Non-fiction features
• Finding facts
• Finding the moral or theme