CRCT Preparation Tips for Teachers, Parents and Students

This guest post comes from Sandi Dennis, Media and Instructional Technology Specialist at Fifth Avenue in the City of Schools of Decatur. The CRCT (Criterion-Referenced Competency Test) is given to Georgia students in grades one through eight each year, usually in the springtime. (Due to budget cuts, the CRCT will not be administered in grades one and two in spring 2013.) This multiple choice test helps show what a student knows about the set of standards taught in Georgia classrooms. 

The Georgia Department of Education maintains a site with helpful information such as a Parent’s Guide. 

There are a few specific strategies that assist with knowledge review and test preparation, but the top strategy to do well on the CRCT is to attend school so your teachers can teach you—either in the classroom or in an online or home-school setting! 

A few ideas for parents and teachers to help students review and prepare…

OAS

Use the Georgia OAS website to practice.  Use practice tests in fun ways such as with student response devices or team challenges.  The Georgia OAS website has practice CRCT tests and a bank of questions for students, teachers, and parents.  Every Georgia school has access to this site.  A recorded webinar is located here which describes new features of the OAS site. 

As a school instructional technology specialist, I created links to numerous practice tests for Math Standards and all other standards. This made it easy for parents or others who found OAS too time-consuming.  Our teachers use their interactive whiteboards to practice using these PDF files with students….no paper is wasted and teachers have ample “teachable moments”.

TEST-TAKING STRATEGIES

Review test taking strategies, especially for multiple choice tests.  Brain Pop is a great site with engaging videos to illustrate testing tips. 

KNOW YOUR STANDARDS

Browse through the standards for your grade level- discuss or create games with the standards.  Cut the standards up into strips and or play a drawing game or charades with the topics to get students thinking about all they have learned this year.  The list of Georgia standards for each grade level is found on the Ga Department of Education Site here.

READ!

Be a reader and surround your children with opportunities to read on a daily basis—this will improve reading CRCT scores. Get a public library card!  Make visits to the library part of your weekly routine!   Practice using context clues to figure out the meaning of unknown words.  Practice identifying the MAIN IDEA and supporting details of any passage. 

INFER AND PREDICT

Try to make inferences, predictions and determine causes and effects (click and search for cause/effect) in everyday life situations.  Use these terms repeatedly and ask students to make inferences about everything so it becomes a natural skill.  The CRCT will almost certainly have questions that check this ability.  Brain Pop Junior has great primary tutorials on these topics.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The bottom line is that everyone has areas in which they can improve—the CRCT is just one way to discover these areas.  Here’s an introductory article that concisely describes score interpretation: “How to Interpret CRCT Scores” by Barbara Sabatini.   A detailed GaDOE document for score interpretation is found here.

Remember….

Relax!  Stay positive!  READ! Practice! And don’t forget the MAGIC PENCILS.

Guest blogger Sandi Dennis is the Media and Instructional Technology Specialist at The 4/5 Academy at Fifth Avenue in the City Schools of Decatur. Her personal ed. tech blog is www.teachertechnotopia.com.