Teaching Middle School ELA

Episode 385: A Test Prep Strategy Students Actually Enjoy (And You’ll Reuse Every Year)

• Caitlin Mitchell

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We share a station-based routine that keeps rigor high, lowers stress, and makes ELA test prep engaging with short passages about sweets from around the world. Students rotate, gather evidence, and solve an acrostic puzzle using a traveling candy journal while we model test-aligned questions.

• why drill-and-kill test prep hurts engagement
• what students actually need for test readiness
• how Sweet Stations are set up and rotated
• using short informational texts with test-style stems
• building a candy journal for answers and keywords
• solving an acrostic puzzle to drive accuracy
• leveraging ChatGPT to draft passages and questions
• keeping pressure low while preserving rigor
• options to recreate or grab the done-for-you pack
• preview of next week’s skill-focused episode

Grab Sweet Stations at 40% off during testing season via this link: https://www.ebteacher.com/test-prep


If you try this with your students, tell us inside the EB Teacher community or message us on Instagram @EBAcademics

SPEAKER_00:

Well, hello teachers, and welcome back to another episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. If you are listening to this episode anywhere in your testing season, I already know what you are likely feeling. You're trying to do right by your students. You know that they need exposure to test style questions. You know that they need practice, reading passages, responding thoughtfully, all of that stuff. But you also know that drill and just repeat passages, packets, endless multiple choice worksheets, test prep boot camps, all of that stuff. It's just not it. Especially this year, engagement is like the biggest struggle for teachers this year, more than any years in the past. It's what I keep hearing over and over and over again from the teachers that I've been working with in a lot of our workshops. And we don't want to put our students in that situation. And we don't want to put you in that situation either, right? It's exhausting for you. Students could not roll their eyes any further into the back of your head, their heads when they start have having to do that. And honestly, it doesn't even lead to better outcomes most of the time. A lot of the times it's just a waste of class time. So today, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna walk you through a test prep activity, a little structure that just does something a little bit different. And you can totally take this and repeat it with different themes, different passages, and you can have ChatGPT help you recreate this. It's great because it keeps the rigor, it hits the skills that students actually need with test prep, but it also is super engaging for our students. It's low stress for them. And honestly, it's kind of fun just because of the topics and the way in which it's structured. And so the best part, like I said, is you can totally recreate this on your own. You can use ChatGPT to input the information that I'm gonna share with you. But if you don't want to spend the time doing that, you can also grab this actual resource of ours at a huge discount. I will include the link for you in our show notes. And if you are an EB teacher with a pro account or an all access account, if you just search for suite stations, this resource will pop up right for you inside of the portal. But if you're not an EB teacher or you don't have that level of access, you can grab a super discounted rate in the show notes. Okay, let's dive into today's episode where I explain this activity. Hi there, ELA teachers. Caitlin here, CEO and co-founder of EB Academics. I'm so excited you're choosing to tune into the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. Our mission here is simple to help middle school ELA teachers take back their time outside of the classroom by providing them with engaging lessons, planning frameworks, and genuine support so that they can become the best version of themselves, both inside and outside of the classroom. And we do this every single day inside the EB Teachers ELA portal. This is a special place we've developed uniquely for ELA teachers to access every single piece of our engaging, fun, and rigorous curriculum so that they have everything they need to batch plan their lessons using our EB Teacher digital planner that's built right into the app. Over the years, we've watched as thousands of teachers from around the world have found success in and out of the classroom after using EB Academics programs. And we're determined to help thousands more. If you're interested in learning more, simply click the link in the podcast description. And in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast every single week. So before I explain the activity, I want to be really clear about something. Test prep should not take over your curriculum. We do not want it replacing meaningful instruction, and we really don't want it to make our students hate reading and writing. What our students really actually need when it comes to test prep is just repeated exposure to how questions are asked, the types of questions that they're gonna see, a couple of strategies for test prep, they need practice reading short, complex passages, and then like the opportunity to actually apply those skills in a fun and engaging way. And I think when students start to feel confident with the structure of the test questions and like, oh, I understand that these types of questions are gonna show up on the test, et cetera, then their anxiety is gonna drop when they go to take the actual test. And in theory, right, their scores will follow, right? They'll do better because they won't feel as much stress and they'll have an idea of what it is that they need to expect as they head into the test. And that's exactly what this activity is designed to do. And I want to add one other thing to this too, that next week's podcast episode is going to be a lot about test taking skills. So make sure that you put it on your calendar or like a reminder to yourself to listen to that episode once it airs next week. Okay, because that's gonna be really helpful in conjunction with this activity. So the activity that I want to talk to you about today is called sweet stations. And the name does mean something because all of the reading passages in this activity are about sweets and candy from around the world. One of them is actually about pockys, which is my son's favorite little snack. Side note, I can't remember if I've shared this on the podcast before. My son is hangry when I pick him up from school or aftercare. So, and he's also a very picky eater. I put a little like charcuterie board together for him. And it has like prosciutto and cheese and crackers and Hawaiian rolls and pocis are like his favorite thing. So that's his little charcuterie board that I pick him up after school with. And it's so funny. His therapist looked at me and she's like, You do what for him every day that you get him from school? And it's like, if it avoids him being mean to me in the car ride home because he's not hangry, I do whatever it takes at this point. Um, but anyways, that's a total side note. So I'm gonna walk you through the activity that you can grab for a discount, or you can recreate this on your own, or if you're an EB teacher with a pro and all access level, you're gonna use this activity with your students. So basically, how it works is all of these reading passages are about sweets or different candies from around the world. So it's really interesting to them. They're interesting short little passages. And essentially what students do is they rotate through different stations, and at each station, they're reading informational passages about candy from different countries, how certain sweets were invented, or cultural traditions that are tied to certain treats. So, like I said, the content itself is engaging, right? Students want to read these passages. Now I know on the test they don't want to read the passages, but too bad. That's what's on the test. That's what we've got to do. But if we're gonna teach them these skills for test taking and we're gonna practice the skills for test taking, we may as well make the passages themselves engaging so that they can actually learn the skill and not be bogged down with the content of boring passages, right? So essentially how the activity works is you set up multiple stations around your classroom. And at each station, there is a short informational passage about one of the things that I said. So, like a suite or a candy or a cultural tradition that's tied to treats. So short informational passage, and then you have a set of corresponding questions that are similar to test questions. And like I said, Chat GPT can totally create this content for you. And essentially what students do is as they move from station to station, they have a little candy journal where they record their responses to their questions. So they're not answering the questions like on a piece of paper at the station. They have this candy journal that they carry around with them and the informational passage and the questions stay at each station. Well, the candy journal is key. So the candy journal keeps everything in one place, and it's really engaging because students are not just answering their questions inside of their journal, but they're also recording key words that are tied to the correct answers, which at the very end all come together in an acrostic puzzle that reveals a fun candy-related fact. So you can set this up with like whatever the answers to your questions are. You're just gonna pick out words from those answers and have them be a part of the acrostic puzzle that is helping to solve a fact. And again, ChatGPT can come up with that fact for you if you want to. And the acrostic puzzle is really helpful because students have a more of a reason to care about the accuracy of their answers because they want to solve the puzzle, right? And the other thing that you can do with this is like you can put candy at each station if you want to. You can have students bring in candy. You can go all out and like make it this fun, like candy-related day. And what's great about the structure of the way that this is set up with the stations, the passages, the highly engaging content itself, and then the journal that they're using is that they're practicing a lot of those sneaky things that sneaky things, those sneaky skills that we want to sneak in there for our students in terms of their reading short passages really carefully, they're understanding common test language, right? You're gonna have ChatGPT come up with questions that are like state test questions for you. They're looking for evidence from the passages to choose their best answer. And they're not just looking for an answer, they're choosing the best answer. And because they're rotating, right? They're reading about candy, they're working with classmates, they're in the site of, they're working with this candy journal. There's candy at each station, right, that they can eat while they're solving the puzzle. There's no pressure, right? And when pressure goes down, engagement goes up, comprehension goes up, all of that type of stuff. And this is the kind of test prep that reinforces those skills. It doesn't burn anyone out, and it's really helping them practice what the test is gonna be like with non-boring content. And again, yeah, on the test, it's gonna be boring. And that's just the way that we're gonna roll. That's what we got to deal with, right? But to prep for it, we don't have to make it just like the test in order to practice those skills. So, like I said, you can totally recreate this on your own. All you're gonna need is short informational passages about a really engaging topic, aligned questions that are like test prep type of questions. You could create a recording journal that has an ending puzzle that students are answering at the end. But again, like I said, I know you guys are super busy. So we've made this resource available for you to purchase at a discount. It's 40% off right now during testing season. Normally our resources are not available for purchase outside of the membership. So this is just a special thing that we put out there because it's testing season and we want to make sure that you guys have the help that you need. Um, so in that resource, everything's done for you, right? The passages, the station cards, the candy journal, and then tons of different decorations that you can set up and it's really fun. Um, so my final thoughts on this is if you've been feeling torn between like I gotta prep my students for the test, and like I am not willing to make my classroom miserable, we can find some middle ground, right? And this is that middle ground. So test prep doesn't really have to feel like test prep. And I think that's what I want you to take away from this episode the most, is that you can recreate a test-like environment, but with highly engaging uh parameters around it that get students engaged in what they're doing, right? And when it doesn't feel like test prep, students are gonna perform better, they're going to retain the information better, and they're gonna have a good time in your classroom. So if you want to grab sweet stations, it's in the show notes. And if you do try this with your students, I would love to hear how it goes. If you're an EB teacher, let us know inside of the EB teacher community. And if you're not, send me a message over on Instagram at EB Academics. All right, you guys, have a wonderful rest of your week and make sure that you join me next week on the podcast. We're gonna be talking about one skill that your students actually need before testing. It's a fantastic episode. And make sure that you come back and listen to that one too, because it supports this week's episode as well. All right, you guys, talk to you later.