Every teacher has their way of teaching things. One of those things is test taking strategies. There are a million things that you could say or do, but this year, I thought I would create a foldable for the kids that explains these strategies the Brazell way. I got the idea for a test taking skills foldable from this pin on Pinterest... http://savvyschoolcounselor.com/8-tips-new-test-takers-should-know/ My creative juices were flowing a little bit better than with the bulletin board I made, so I was able to take this and morph it into something more relevant to my classroom. I did 6 flaps total. 1- Read the question twice My kids always tell me they only read it one time and after going over the answer with the kids, they say "Oh, I didn't read the question right." So I encourage them to read it twice before even looking at the answers to make sure they read everything and hopefully understand it. 2- Open your filing cabinet One of our special education diagnosticians refers to the brain as a filing cabinet. It stores information and we just have to go back and get it. I always tell my kids to try and answer the question without even looking at the answers. What do THEY think the answer is? So I ask them, does this questions require prior knowledge that you need to go get? Or is the answer in the question? If you need to go back into your filing cabinet, go get that information and use it!! 3- Underline vocab words Vocabulary is so important. Questions can be so difficult if they don't understand the vocabulary being used. I pound vocab into their brains. So they need to make sure they understand the vocab before they can answer the question. 4- Highlight key words To me, key words are when, where and how something is going down. Questions about lab safety for example, it's important to know if you should wear gloves before, after or during a messy experiment. So I encourage them to find these words so they have an idea of time and place. 5- Circle amounts If there is a question that is basically spelling out information on a chart, but not giving you an actual chart to look at, the numbers or amounts are important so I tell them to notice those things. 6- Slash the trash Now we get to the answers. They are pretty good about being able to cross out one or two answers. Once those are gone, chances are they will get closer to the correct answer. I'm sure these could be used in any order really, but they are all important to me and so I wanted to have something the kids could physically hold and read to help them remember these steps. I plan on letting them have them out for tests. We'll see how it goes!!