The Florida Department of Education provides the FCAT Explorer, a practice website for test-taking students. It has a Galactic Library, geared to third-grade students. It has an adaptive interface that responds differently depending on a student's answers to the practice questions. If a student answers a question incorrectly, an instructional passage pops up that tells the student why his response was incorrect. For fourth-graders, there's Reading Odyssey, which contains fictional and non-fictional excerpts within an animated interface. Similar animated study resources are available for the sixth and eighth grades. High school sophomores can use the Reading Timelime, a more sophisticated tutorial with primers on reading skills and 200 practice test questions.
Ask students, when they are evaluating a written passage, to determine the author's intention or purpose. The text may be informational, as in a cookbook or history. It may be for entertainment or inspiration, as in poems, plays or fictional stories, or for persuasion, as in advertisements extolling products' virtues.
When reading story passages, students can look at the differences and similarities among characters in the story. By using a device called a character frame, students describe a particular character, her personality, and story details that support this reasoning. In character mapping, the student draws a picture of two or three characters along with their names. They write short descriptions of the characters around the drawings, and then discuss their character maps with others in the class.
A rubric is a criterion that establishes the best responses for questions on the FCAT. Students read sample stories or passages and write responses to questions, which are then evaluated by teachers or tutors. There are samples of short and extended written responses, along with their scores and the reasons for those scores. Sample responses and their corresponding grades will give students a clear idea of what kinds of answers are appropriate for various kinds of questions.
According to an article titled "Physically Active Play and Cognition: An Academic Matter?" and published in the American Journal of Play, students who participate in strenuous physical activity, such as non-competitive after-school play, experience heightened brain development and concentration. Any fun aerobic exercise that gets the heart pumping is beneficial to children's minds as well as their bodies, the article says. Ensuring that kids get proper exercise will boost their ability to study and comprehend materials on the FCAT and in schoolwork in general.
Students taking the tenth-grade FCAT tests should underline parts of the examination text they consider important. By reading the entire text before underlining, and selecting only key sentences or passages, students will be able to quickly move on to comprehending the piece and answering the questions about it. Students are allowed to write on their FCAT exam papers, so they may write notes in the margin and circle important terms in addition to underlining.