When I was younger, I had a coach who always said, “Practice as you’ll perform, because you’ll perform as you 
practiced.” She was 100% correct. If I practiced with a specific bad habit, it appeared during game time. If I didn’t work to my full capacity, I was more winded during game time. It was important that I practiced as I wanted to perform–and I always told my students the same. Feeling comfortable with the testing arena is essential to actually demonstrating what you know. Nerves can play a huge part. Tests aren’t end all be alls–but they do matter. And, students want to do well and feel good. So, as their teacher, their educational coach, it’s my responsibility to know as much about what they will see as possible. My students need to know how to master the three types of questions that will appear:
- Evidence-Based Select Response (pg. 2)
- Technology-Enhanced Constructed Response (pg. 3)
- Prose Constructed Response (pg. 4)
That means we need to practice these types of questions. To be clear, that doesn’t mean we just do the PARCC practice tests over and over again, it means that the content I want to cover and teach in my class is assessed in an aligned format. That’s why I’m going to go through each question type and talk about how it appears on PARCC, how I coach my students to prepare for it, and how it has been recreated on Edcite.
The Edcite Blog 
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