Hello everybody, and thanks for joining! My name is Adam, and I will be helping to moderate the webinar today.
The webinar that you will be watching today is a Model Teaching Spotlight Webinar. Our spotlight webinars are designed to provide teachers with easy-to-implement strategies and concepts, all within a quick, bite-sized, 30-minute time frame.
The webinar that you are attending today is composed of content taken from our course titled: Behavior Strategies for Improved Testing Performance.
This course explores guidelines for teaching testing behaviors, testing strategies, and a process for students to justify their answer choices on assessments. You will learn specific behaviors or strategies to identify in students, and some simple methods to explicitly teach appropriate testing behaviors.
Today’s webinar will offer a summary of some of the principles discussed in the course.
Now, to kick off our webinar, I’d like to introduce Shayna.
Shayna Pond is the Director of Teacher Education at Model Teaching and leads our course research and design team. Her team is responsible for creating practical, actionable professional development at Model Teaching. As a former classroom teacher, instructional leader, and certified appraiser, Shayna focuses on research-aligned trainings that help teachers grow their practice and advance their careers.
And now I’ll turn this webinar over to Shayna to get started!
Thank you so much for the introduction! Just a little bit more about me: I have 16 years of experience in education, where I was a high school teacher, and assistant principal, a school turnaround and support specialist, and now director of teacher education here at Model Teaching. Topics around testing behaviors are special to me because I did so much school turnaround work that involved helping students become strong test takers and helping teachers use tests as a way to teach concepts in preparation for state exams. What I found was that teaching students strong testing behaviors and requiring lots of practice on tests actually helped them yes perform better on tests, but improved their memory of the concepts they were learning. So this webinar is going to talk more about why that is.
So the webinar today is called Answering with Confidence: The Thinking Skills Behind Test Success.
This is not a full training, but a preview meant to help you think about ways you can help prepare your students for success on an assessment, to show you what they know. These tips are especially useful for your end-of-year testing or larger assessments like finals, where your students have to demonstrate learning over a large variety of concepts.
Today, we’re focusing on some research that shows why practice tests and certain testing behaviors improve student performance. We’ll discuss the answer justification process as a simple strategy you can teach your students, and we’ll leave you with some thoughts on how to set your students up for testing success. So today this webinar is really simple in terms of one small thing you can implement to improve test success, but its very powerful in that it really can help your students learn and perform better.
First of all let’s talk about what testing behaviors are. Testing behaviors are the processes and actions students complete as they answer test questions and complete an assessment. In general, testing behaviors fall into two categories. The first is external behaviors. These are observable behaviors that you can see as you walk around the room and view your students. They include behaviors during the test itself, like whether a student is focused and engaged, and general testing and answering strategies, like whether they’re annotating questions or eliminating wrong answers.
The second category is internal behaviors. These are not visible to the teacher; they are the thinking processes that occur in the student’s mind as they grapple with questions and decide how to answer. While you can’t watch a student think, you absolutely can teach and reinforce these thought processes.
Both external and internal behaviors can be supported and strengthened by the teacher, and practicing interacting with tests and then practicing appropriate behaviors when taking a test can be an important way to help boost not just test scores but what you’ll see in a moment when we review some research, student learning as well. Today, this webinar will focus on one of those internal testing behaviors and present a simple method you can ask students to complete as they take a test. Practicing this behavior before and during a test often improves student performance.
But before we dive into that specific strategy, we’re going to discuss a few simple theories that will help show why practicing some internal testing behaviors is an important process in learning.
Let’s talk about some research that discusses how we learn. Because once you see the science, you’ll be better able to understand that test preparation isn’t really just tricks or shortcuts to learning, but they are actually a structured application of how memory is built. And I think that’s really important, since we often may have this idea that we don’t want to “teach to the test”, but there are actually quite a few benefits of utilizing test preparation strategies or practicing with tests in order to help students learn.
I’m going to briefly cover three learning theories: generative learning theory, the pre-test theory, and the testing effect theory. This is absolutely not a comprehensive list of learning theories that support the practice and use of internal testing behaviors, but it’s just a few to get your mind thinking about how practicing test-taking and utilizing specific strategies to answer questions is actually rooted in research and how it supports learning and test-taking skills in general.
So first, we are going to talk about the generative learning theory.
For decades, classrooms were built on what we might call the transmission model of learning, where the teacher delivers information clearly and completely, the student receives it, and stores it. The idea was that the better the delivery by the teacher, the better the learning in the students. Of course, there is absolute truth in this idea, but we now know this model fundamentally misunderstands how the brain works, and learning is much more complex. There are additional strategies over just great delivery of lesson content that can help students learn more.
In the 1970s, UCLA educational psychologist Merlin Wittrock proposed something very different. His Generative Learning Theory argues that the brain does not record information like a camera but it constructs meaning by actively building connections between new content and what it already knows. You guys already know this through your use of scaffolding, KWL charts, etc.
Wittrock basically said that learning is not something that happens to a student. It is something a student’s brain does. And the key implication of this is that the quality of the learner’s mental activity, not the quality of the delivery by the teacher, is what really determines whether learning sticks.
A perfectly delivered lesson produces little learning if the student is passive. But an imperfect lesson can produce deep learning if the student is actively generating meaning from it.
Wittrock identified four specific processes that drive generative learning. Understanding these will help you see exactly why certain classroom activities produce deep learning and others do not.
The first is recall, and that’s where you are activating relevant prior knowledge before engaging with new content.
The second is integration, and that is where students are building relationships between new information and what the student already knows. This process makes learning memorable because you connect content to something familiar.
The third is organization, which is imposing structure on information by identifying patterns, hierarchies, sequences, and categories. Basically, this third process hits on the idea that the brain is a pattern-recognition machine, and so helping students organize information into meaningful structures, teaching them what to do with their knowledge, makes it far more retrievable later.
The fourth is elaboration, where students are extending and deepening their understanding through examples, analogies, explanations, inferences, and predictions.
The more actively a learner engages in these four processes, the deeper the learning becomes, the more sticky learning is. And it’s the foundation for why answer justification works as powerfully as it does, which we’ll come back to shortly. That’s our internal testing behavior we will discuss.
So a very straightforward example of the generative learning theory would be when you are introducing a somewhat complex topic, maybe say like the water cycle. You ask students to write down what they know and want to know about the water cycle, and of course, they may say something like the water cycle probably has to do with rain, or they want to know perhaps how clouds hold water. As you’re teaching them these concepts, they’re thinking back to what they already know about the water cycle within their minds. They can actually look outside and look at the weather patterns and understand, as you’re explaining the water cycle, how it actually relates to real life. They were basically generating knowledge and applying it to, like in this case, the real world.
The Pre-Testing Effect is a pretty surprising and almost counterintuitive finding in education research.
In 2009, researchers Nate Kornell, Lindsey Richland, and Liche Sean Kao published a study finding that students who took a pretest before reading a passage performed better on the final test than those who did not pretest. And here’s the remarkable part: this held true even for questions they answered wrong on the pretest.
This became known as the Pre-Testing Effect Theory, and what it tells us is something that challenges a lot of intuitions about learning: wrong answers on a pretest don’t hinder future learning at all. Taking practice tests, whether students get the answer right or wrong, doesn’t matter; they actually help prepare students for accepting new knowledge and remembering it when they encounter it in class.
Here’s the mechanism for why we think this works. When students encounter material they do not know, they pay more attention to future instruction because they are actively seeking to fill in the gaps. Their brain is more receptive to new information and is primed to store it in long-term memory, and they are simply just more likely to be looking for the concepts that was on that pre-test. Additionally, they have already begun to create mental frameworks for the missing information, so that when it is finally presented, it is easier to absorb.
So the pre-testing is effective because it actually serves several purposes. In your mind, you may say that you provide a pre-test so that you can collect diagnostic information on your students to help inform your instruction. This is certainly true and an important component of your instructional processes but the second important piece is that the act of participating in a pre-test in the first place primes students’ brains for receiving the knowledge later on.
So a very simple example of the pre-testing effect would be if you had a reading passage that you wanted students to read and then answer test questions about. What you would do is: Provide them with the test questions first.
Ask them to read those questions.
Then ask them to read the passage.
Doing that allows them to pick up on the information that they’re supposed to be learning as they’re reading. Then when they’re taking the test again and actually answering those questions, they’re more likely to get them correct.
A less obvious example Would be something like providing your students with a pre-test on an upcoming math unit. You will expect most of the students to get many of the answers wrong since this is all new knowledge but the simple act of trying the test out first without understanding the content and then actually engaging in the learning process afterwards through your instruction will help your students retain the information more than just introducing the new concepts. And they’ll be more likely to perform better on a post- test than if they didn’t first take a pre-test.
The last major theory we will discuss is the Testing Effect, and it has one of the longest research histories in all of education. The first published study is attributed to Edwina Abbott in 1909. Since then, over a century of research has confirmed and deepened the finding: actively retrieving information from memory strengthens long-term retention far more than re-reading or passive review. In other words, being tested on information helps retain that information.
The simple act of being tested even before you feel ready makes the ability to remember concepts much stronger. This is why quizzing students, even with low stakes, produces better retention than having them reread the same content. So in other words, it’s going to be better for your students if you give them an actual practice test than it is to just give them a study guide and say, “Hey, study this material.”
There are two types of retrieval. Passive retrieval includes things like matching, fill-in-the-blank, and multiple-choice questions. The answer is there — students must choose the correct one. This type builds confidence and provides scaffolding.
Active retrieval is more open-ended; students must generate the correct answers themselves rather than selecting from options. Labeling a diagram without a word bank. Writing a summary from memory. Explaining a concept to a partner. Active retrieval forces the brain to work harder, making stronger, more durable neural connections.
Teaching testing behaviors and having students practice test-taking and prepare for tests by using practice tests is essentially designing retrieval practice into the behavioral routine itself. And the testing effects say that this produces better learning and stronger memory.
So a super simple example of the testing effect theory in action might be when you provide your students with an exit ticket every single day. That includes questions about the material for the day. Or this might be giving them, like I said earlier, a practice test instead of a study guide. Completing actual assessments is going to be more powerful, typically, than just simply studying or reading notes.
Perhaps this idea is somewhat interesting to you because I think when we think commonly about assessments and exit tickets and things like that, we are thinking about measuring student learning. What this testing effect theory says is that engaging in these assessments, exit tickets, and things like that is actually working to require students to retrieve information and improve their memory, and thus improve their learning as well. So again, it’s kind of like doubly beneficial
Ok so let’s shift gears now to Internal testing behaviors and what we mean by that.
This is the thinking process that occurs in a student’s mind as they take a test.
Evaluating a reading passage or identifying the information given in a word problem
Recalling what they know to consider how to answer the question
Thinking through the process of figuring out which answer choices are correct or incorrect, how an essay should be structured, or what the next step might be in a short answer responses
The critical reasoning processes that occur inside a student’s mind as they tackle text questions
The rest of this webinar will discuss the answer justification process as a set of three internal steps students can complete during a test. But what’s important is that they practice this process during practice tests as a way of preparing for the real test, too. Very simple, very easy to implement, but hits on those three learning theories and helps just create a structure for you to teach your students to think through and analyze questions as they are practicing during pre-test, during practice tests, and taking the real thing.
The answer Justification Process is a specific internal testing behavior that your students will be using at all times during study sessions and during final assessments as well. It’s simply a series of mental checks to recall information and justify an answer response. We’ll dig into the answer justification process in just a minute, but first, let’s just reinforce how those learning theories connect with using this process during preparation and test-taking.
The Answer justification process is an active learning experience and requires students to not only recall information but to extend and elaborate it. This, of course, matches what generative learning theory tells us.
The answer justification process allows for students to practice their thinking and rationale during pre-tests and practice. Even when they answer incorrectly, the thought process that occurs during the wrong answering process and eventually when it is corrected and students choose the right answer, helps establish and solidify the content and the thinking process in students’ minds.
And because answer justification requires active retrieval and rationale from a student when choosing an answer, it aligns well with the testing effect that says active versus passive retrieval of concepts strengthens memory. As a test-prep strategy, this strengthens the retrieval process and ensures better success on the real test.
This is the practical implication for assessment: every time a student is asked to justify an answer — to explain how they got it, why it’s correct, and what evidence supports it they are engaging in these theories like the generative learning theory. And because You will be requiring students to practice these behaviors during pre-tests, during practice tests, and then on the real test. Also supports the pre-testing and testing effect theories as well.
The answer justification process comes down to three questions that students should ask themselves for every single problem they encounter on a test.
The first question is HOW did you get your answer? This asks students to describe the steps they used to find the solution. It is more of a procedural step. Example prompts: “How did you get 35?” “How did you know it was about bees?” “How can you tell this is spelled wrong?“ And in the student’s mind, they are describing that to themselves before they move on.
The second question is WHY is the answer ___ [whatever it is]? This asks students to explain the abstract thinking process they used to choose their answer. When they have to articulate the reasoning behind their choice, they’re practicing both recall and elaboration and analysis of ideas, but it can also help them uncover any faulty logic in their answers. Example prompts: “Why did you choose multiplication instead of addition?” “Why do you think Maria is afraid of bees?” “Why did you choose to add this detail?“ So a student is going to be asking himself this and answering it in his mind before moving on.
The third question is WHAT is your evidence? This is the deepest and most powerful. This asks students to identify specific information from the text, or specific rules, content, or notes they used to justify their answer. Example prompts: “What information in the word problem tells you to multiply?” “What information in the text tells you that Maria is afraid?” “What notes or rules are required to answer this question?“ So again, students are asking themselves this question and then answering it, justifying to themselves that they have selected or written down the correct answer.
When students can answer all three questions and all three align, they can be highly confident in their answer. When they can’t, they’ve found a problem to fix before they move on. Teach students to ask, then answer, each of these questions for every single problem they encounter. So when you’re teaching students this process, and they’re practicing it during pre-test, during practice tests, and then on the real thing during the pre-test and practice tests, they’re actually also practicing retrieving information and strengthening their knowledge. When they’re getting to the actual real test, they already have the skills in place to accurately select a correct answer choice. But also, they will already at that point have a much firmer foundation in the content because of their prior practice.
Read some examples.
Now, a student might have a completely different response or rationale for each question, and of course, that is completely fine. It’s really the process of justifying to themselves the correct answer based on the information they are recalling.
You may be thinking that this seems obvious for students, or they’re just kind of repeating what they’re choosing as an answer, and that is exactly correct. It’s just a way of reinforcing the concepts and constantly forcing students to recall and elaborate on what they know already to strengthen their memory and develop strong reasoning skills when they encounter questions that require them to recall information and extend their thinking. As adults, we engage in processes like this naturally, but they have been learned over time. You’re just providing a structure for students to analyze and evaluate their answer choices, even if the process itself seems obvious to you as an adult.
Let’s look at how the answer justification process applies to multiple-choice questions — the most common type on state assessments and standardized tests.
The key insight is that students should apply the justification process to every answer choice, not just the one they want to select. For each choice, they ask: Why is this wrong? If they can point to evidence that it doesn’t fit, they cross it out. If they’re unsure, they underline it and move on.
Once they’ve worked through all the choices, they arrive at the correct answer. They can then do one final check: How did I select this? Why is it right? What evidence supports it?
This reduces careless mistakes and reinforces learning with every question.
The answer justification process works equally well for short-answer and extended-response questions, where a student’s thinking is directly visible in what they write.
Before writing, ask HOW: What approach will I take? For math, this means identifying the right operation before touching the pencil. For reading responses, it means identifying the main idea and supporting evidence first.
While writing, ask WHY: What reasoning connects my answer to the question? Basically, it’s a stop point and a check to see if what they’re doing is correct.
After writing, ask WHAT: Does my evidence actually support my answer? For reading, return to the text to verify. For math, confirm each operation matched what the problem asked.
This process helps students close gaps, self-check accuracy, and ensure sufficient detail while reinforcing their learning along the way.
Let’s look at two students to make the answer justification process concrete.
Julian has on-level reading skills but uses a consistent answer justification process on his reading comprehension assessments by returning to the text, finding evidence, and eliminating wrong answers with confidence. When he gets questions wrong, he works with a partner after the test to justify the correct answer, uncovering what he missed and strengthening his critical reading over time.
Matthew is a strong reader who answers questions confidently without a justification process. He normally performs well but misses the higher-order thinking questions and rarely learns from those mistakes when his test comes back because he isn’t engaging in the answer justification process to identify what was correct, why it was correct, and what evidence led to it being correct.
Julian’s process consistently produces more accurate answers and helps him grow from every mistake. Matthew’s natural ability serves him now, but as tests grow more complex, a lack of process will cost him, especially on high-stakes exams like college entrance tests, where critical reasoning can significantly impact a score.
How do you get students to actually use the answer justification process consistently? The same approach you’d use for any important skill: explicit instruction, modeling, guided practice, feedback, and repetition.
Before the test, explicitly teach the process. Model your own thought process when selecting an answer: How did you get your answer? Why is it the answer? What is your evidence? Incorporate this into your daily lesson activities. When students are asked to complete questions in class, model the justification process when reviewing the correct answer choice. Then ask students to practice by themselves, both in small groups and independently.
During the assessment, post the steps on the board or provide a printed card for each student. As you roam the room and observe our students, also notice whether students are actively checking their work. Provide feedback or check in with students, reminding them to use the justification process before turning in their test.
After the assessment — and this is the step that is most often skipped, but I think is the most important— require students to reflect on the answers they got wrong and think about why the correct answer is, in fact, correct. Requiring this process after an assessment helps students immediately address misconceptions and strengthen their knowledge for future assessments. A post-test review window is super powerful because a wrong answer attempt followed by correction creates very strong memory encoding.
Consistency is the key. Testing behaviors cannot be internalized unless students consistently practice them on assessments and receive feedback and support. What may seem obvious to you is not obvious to many students.
Let me bring everything together. We discussed a very simple and straightforward concept today. And that’s that you can improve students’ thinking skills on a test and subsequently improve their learning by teaching them the answer justification process as they interact with practice tests and tests for studying before even encountering the final assessment.
Those internal testing behaviors are such a powerful and simple procedure you can add to your students’ practice test-taking routines. The HOW, WHY, and WHAT questions are both procedural steps and also a way for students to retrieve information and then apply it and evaluate it within the context of the test.
Consistency is key. Testing behaviors cannot be internalized unless students practice them on every assessment and practice taking tests regularly, with feedback and support over time. These skills must be woven into how you teach all year and not treated as a pre-test cramming strategy.
And here’s your action step: in your next lesson, design a pre-test, practice tests, and your final assessment together and use the tests as learning tools throughout your lesson. Model and then reinforce the answer justification process to help your students not only learn content but also improve their internal thinking skills for success on the next test.
Super simple, but hopefully, you can see it as the super valuable strategy that this is! And that’s all I have for you today in this short webinar session!
Thank you, Shayna!
If you are interested in learning more about authentic engagement, the full course dives deeper into what we call “external testing behaviors” as well as the answer justification process, or “internal testing behaviors” that, when combined, can help your students to excel on assessments.
The course also includes a testing behaviors tracker for monitoring student testing behaviors, and an answer justification handout to provide to your students.
You can choose the one-hour quick course for PD clock hours, or our credit course, where you will earn 1 semester credit from any of our university partners.
If you are interested, you can register for the course at modelteaching.com.
That’s all the time that we have today, but if you have a question about today’s webinar, feel free to email us anytime at courses@modelteaching.com.
This marks the end of this Model Teaching Spotlight webinar. And if you would like to watch the webinar again or share it with any colleagues, we will be emailing out a copy of the webinar recording.
Also, make sure to sign up for our upcoming webinar: Press Pause and Power Up! The Case for Brain Breaks On Wednesday, April 22nd. You can go to our News and Events page at modelteaching.com to register.
Thank you again for joining us, and enjoy the rest of your week!
