Forget Spiraling Everything: The One Skill Your Students Actually Need Before Testing

If you’re anywhere near testing season, you might feel the urge to spiral everything.

Every standard.
Every question type.
Every passage structure.

It usually comes from a good place. You want your students to be prepared.

But spiraling everything often creates the opposite result.

Students feel overwhelmed.
Teachers feel behind.
And the real issue that’s causing students to struggle never gets addressed.

That’s why this episode takes a different approach to test prep.

Instead of adding more passages, more practice, or more review, we focus on the one skill that matters most before testing season begins. Not an activity. Not a packet. A skill.

And it’s something many students have never been explicitly taught.

In this episode, I explain why spiraling content can backfire, what students actually struggle with on tests, and how teaching test literacy helps students slow down, panic less, and show what they already know.

If you’re feeling pressure to do more right now, this episode will help you refocus on what actually moves the needle.

HERE ARE THE 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:

1️⃣ More practice doesn’t fix confusion
Most students don’t struggle because they don’t know the content. They struggle because they don’t understand how test questions work.

2️⃣ Test literacy is a skill, not a strategy
When students understand how questions are structured and what they’re being asked to do, performance improves across reading and writing tasks.

3️⃣ Clarity reduces anxiety and errors
Teaching students to slow down, notice direction words, and identify critical words helps them answer more accurately without more drilling.

DIRECTION WORDS AND CRITICAL WORDS

One of the most overlooked parts of test literacy is teaching students to read questions carefully.

Direction words like analyze, explain, and summarize tell students what kind of thinking is required. Critical words like best, except, and not completely change a question’s meaning.

Teaching students to notice these words before answering prevents unnecessary mistakes and builds confidence.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Evidence-Based Writing Approach
Claim, Evidence, and Justification Framework

MORE FROM EB ACADEMICS

If you want students to consistently practice clear thinking, evidence selection, and justification across discussions and writing tasks, the EB Writing Approach provides a repeatable framework you can use all year long.

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