I’ve been working with a group of teachers putting together a curriculum map comprised of units of study for reading workshop. One of the units that came up was a “Testing - Genre Study”. I’ve come across this in other curriculum maps as well, but I never had an opportunity until now to have a conversation around what exactly that genre study would look like. If the unit includes having students examine the structure and format of the Language Arts test they are expected to take, or have students learn to pace themselves during a timed-testing session, or even using a scan tron sheet, then I see the importance of putting testing into a curriculum map.  If however, for example, it involves teaching students how to possibly recognize and then answer certain types of questions, or how to figure out an unknown word in a reading passage by using context clues, then I don’t see a “Testing- Genre Study” being placed as a unit of study for a month or so in a yearlong curriculum calendar. To me, it would be like putting a “Thinking – Genre Study” in a reading workshop curriculum map.  The skills and strategies that kids need in order to be effective test takers are linked to the skills and strategies needed to be an effective reader. If we agree with this thinking then test taking strategies and skills need to be taught alongside all the reading strategies and skills units we introduce across the year. For example, if you are modeling which clues in a read aloud text helped you to determine the main idea of a text, or what the author wanted us to know the text was mostly about, then it is a great time to say, “If I was answering a test question about main idea which asked me what the passage was mainly about I would use the same strategies and skills I use as a reader to answer the question.  I would look at the clues in the passage and decide if what I think the main idea of this passage is matches one of the choices.” I’m thinking that the essential elements necessary for getting kids ready for a test may be embedded in the great teaching we do, but I think it needs to be extracted and the application of that thinking needs to be explicitly taught during all the units of study. This philosophy is the backbone of the Testing Fundamentals units of study. The lessons in the units explicitly teach kids how to become effective test takers by applying what they are learning in reading workshop to test taking situations. Becoming an effective test taker is not about answering the question correctly, but about knowing and being able to explain how you derived at the answer. This kind of thinking can’t be neatly wrapped up in a month long unit called a “Testing- Genre Study”