Review potential test questions every day. Get a fourth-grade practice test and choose a question to display on the overhead or write on the board. Spend between five and 10 minutes discussing the question and the answer. Practice tests are available from most states' education departments via the Internet. Pearson Longman publishes an on line test your students can take on the computer.
Review comprehension strategies often. Fourth-grade students should already be familiar with skills such as summarizing, predicting and finding the main idea. Help students practice these skills in class when reading stories and other texts such as magazine or newspaper articles.
Create classroom tests that mimic the standardized format. If your tests throughout the year contain multiple-choice questions and answers that have to be bubbled in, the standardized test will not seem so unfamiliar. Fourth-graders have been taking standardized tests for only one or two years. They need frequent exposure to assessments that are set up in a similar style. This will help lessen the stress that many students experience as test time nears.
Teach test-taking skills such as narrowing down possible answers, looking for keywords and using graphic organizers. These are comprehension skills that are part of most fourth-grade curricula and are summarizing tools that will help them become better test-takers. Work on these strategies all year, not just the week or two before the test. This is especially important because you cannot help your students on the actual test day.