Algebra I STAAR Review

Despite the best of intentions, I know I haven't blogged much in the last couple of years.  I'm hoping that is going to change going into next year.  But I thought I could try and get the ball rolling with my blogging again by sharing what I came up with for reviewing my Algebra I students for the STAAR test this year.

The first thing I did was teach my students the "Five STAAR Strategies".  On the day of the test, we gave each student a pencil with colored stickers on it to remind them of these strategies.  The first strategy was "Fix Your Formula Chart" which simply means for them to add a few useful things to the formula chart before they even begin answering questions on the test.  I gave them a "blank" copy of the formula chart to practice fixing every day at the start of class for the month leading up to the test.

Then I found this amazing website and immediately downloaded all of the worksheets.  I combined the worksheets for each Reporting Category into two files - one containing all of the Readiness Standards for that Reporting Category and one containing all of the Supporting Standards for that Reporting Category.  In case you aren't familiar with the blueprint for the Algebra I STAAR, the Readiness Standards make up 60-65% of the test, so we started with them.

Readiness Standards
RC 1
RC 2
RC 3
RC 4
RC 5

Supporting Standards
RC 1
RC 2
RC 3
RC 4
RC 5

I would work the problems on the worksheets out with my students together in class one day, and then have them complete a Quizizz containing similar problems the next day.  The problems on the worksheets came from the 2013 released STAAR and old TAKS tests.  The problems on each Quizizz came from the 2014 and 2015 released STAAR tests.  (I gave the kids a hard copy of the questions because some of the problems are hard to read on the Quizizz.)

RC 1 Quizizz - hard copy
RC 2 Quizizz - hard copy
RC 3 Part 1 Quizizz - hard copy
RC 3 Part 2 Quizizz - hard copy
RC 4 Quizizz - hard copy
RC 5 Quizizz - hard copy

We ended up not having time to do very many of the supporting standards, so I went through and picked out the ones I thought would be very easy for them to understand and remember, like independent/dependent, function/not a function, parent functions, and intercepts.

We won't get results until right before school is out, so I don't know how effective all of this was, but I really liked the structure of it.  There are SO MANY problems that can be worked using the "GRAPH" and "TABLE" features of the calculator, so I think it really helped for the students to see that and get practice doing it.

How do you review your students for your End of Course Exam?