Some of you are testing at this moment or just finished standardized testing, and the last word you want to hear is "testing;" but take a moment and think with me about the way we are approaching testing in our schools. Is it a dreaded time when we test students in order to get them ready for the test? Is it a time when practice tests take over curriculum and instruction? Is it a time when we worry about how children will do and count the days until it is over and all the make ups are done?

Well, this article may not take care of all those things but I hope it will cause some of us to think about testing differently in the future and possibly alleviate some of the stress we teachers deal with when we hear that awful four-letter word........................ no, not that one........................the other four-letter word,........................T-E-S-T!

What if we approached testing as a new genre for children, the way we do non-fiction, poetry or biography? What if, instead of gearing children up to practice for the test a few weeks prior to the test, we infused this teaching of the genre into our curriculum starting on the first day of school? What if we unpacked for students on a daily basis all of the features, elements and vocabulary we know are in tests? What if we were honest with children about why performing well on tests was so important to people outside the classroom? What if?

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