Skip to main content

Test Prep - TDA Writing with Writable


We are within a three week window of our state testing here in South Carolina and the test most teachers are worried about is the writing portion of the ELA test. The ELA test is divided into two days with the writing test on the first day and the reading test on the second day. The writing test has a text dependent analysis question (TDA) which requires a lot of higher order thinking/writing for our students (many of whom are taking it for the first time...on a computer).

I am super sympathetic, having taught writing. That is why I got SUPER EXCITED when I ran across the Writable site at conference in February. The site has a lot of TDA type questions and passages already put together in a format that mimics what students will see in May. It is not an exact match (the site corrects spelling and has a read-to-me option...which they won't see on the state test) but for the most part it is a way to give students the opportunity to see a writing passage on one side and a TDA on the other side for practice purposes.

The site offers a 60 day free trial (which activates as soon as the first student joins your class so you can make an account and look around for a bit to see if it is something you might use). You can use their prompts or (and this is what made me excited) you can make your own. I made several, which I will link below. I love that you can make prompts and then share them with anyone with a link.

Another exciting feature is that you can see revisions. Things that are removed from the first version are highlighted in red and things that are add are highlighted in green.




I have barely scratched the surface of this site...but for test prep practice I am loving it! I made a short overview video (again focusing on test prep ONLY). If you want more detailed training their YouTube channel is a good place to start. 

Here are links to the TDA's I put together on the Writable site:

Paper Bag Princess - https://app.getwritable.com/p/66f8bd88-320e-4428-b49b-8c481cc8caf0
Spring Discovery - https://app.getwritable.com/p/dc4eeb05-2a43-4a31-b34a-39a83ce470ec?fbclid=IwAR1EdustSTYcL3VWtJakr4sit8vxjnshlH-V2kpxyxHAMHQyurh1_cDECAQ
Elephant Talk - https://app.getwritable.com/p/a9e354b4-77d3-4d17-b5ef-723fe161f9eb
Alyssa Wears a Bow Tie - https://app.getwritable.com/p/89de1ffe-504e-43d6-a336-39d6de7c6e04
The Noisiest Cat - https://app.getwritable.com/p/d342008a-5eb6-44bf-b809-69799d2b582f
Mo, Bow Tie Designer - https://app.getwritable.com/p/c4af12bc-7085-4658-bdc4-771aff72cdcc (this has a link to the YouTube video and the text is the transcripts)
Competitive Double Dutch - https://app.getwritable.com/p/cea95d4d-b7b9-4aef-9514-e27aa980f97b (this has a link to the YouTube video and the text is the transcripts) 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock&
5 comments
Read more

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.
13 comments
Read more

Bill Nye Songs with Lyrics

At the end of the Bill Nye videos he always has a fun song that goes with the episode. You can find many of the songs as stand alone videos on YouTube. This came in handy because today I am teaching a lesson on layers of the atmosphere and found a song from his Atmosphere video on YouTube titled "Fresh Aire." I really wanted to remix it and put the lyrics on the video (so the kids could sing along and see how the lyrics matched the lesson). The first thing I did was found a site that has all the Bill Nye lyrics posted used my YouTube downloader ( see instructions here ) and downloaded the song. I then imported the video into Movie Maker Live and used the caption feature to put the lyrics on the different frames (cutting and pasting from the lyrics site into Movie Maker Live). I saved the video and reposted to YouTube so other teachers could use the video with lyrics (the finished video is posted above). The process was pretty easy and I am thinking about doing it for more
Post a Comment
Read more