Episode 385: A Test Prep Strategy Students Actually Enjoy (And You’ll Reuse Every Year) — Teaching Middle School ELA

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We share a station-based routine that keeps rigor high, lowers stress, and makes ELA test prep engaging with short passages about sweets from around the world. Students rotate, gather evidence, and solve an acrostic puzzle using a traveling candy journal while we model test-aligned questions.

• why drill-and-kill test prep hurts engagement
• what students actually need for test readiness
• how Sweet Stations are set up and rotated
• using short informational texts with test-style stems
• building a candy journal for answers and keywords
• solving an acrostic puzzle to drive accuracy
• leveraging ChatGPT to draft passages and questions
• keeping pressure low while preserving rigor
• options to recreate or grab the done-for-you pack
• preview of next week’s skill-focused episode

Grab Sweet Stations at 40% off during testing season via this link: https://www.ebteacher.com/test-prep

If you try this with your students, tell us inside the EB Teacher community or message us on Instagram @EBAcademics