Put Thinking to the Test

Put Thinking to the Test
Written by: Lori Conrad, Missy Matthews, Cheryl Zimmerman, and Patrick A. Allen

In the continuing battle between teaching to the test and providing a high quality education the fosters the development of critical thinkers, Put thinking to the test merges instructional ideas for test prep with the ideas of Mosaic of thought by Ellin Oliver Keene. After explaining how they plan on tackling this seemingly impossible task, the authors discuss how to break down reading testing as a genre by looking at reading skills, strategies, and purpose.  They continue by breaking down craft lessons for asking questions, mental images, inferences, synthesis, schema, determining importance, and monitoring for meaning. In a way that will make reading teachers fall in love just a little, they push relentlessly to incorporate test-prep into authentic instruction, critical thinking, and critical writing. The samples of student work will make skeptics believe that it is possible to integrate test prep into high quality instruction.  
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Conrad, Lori, Matthews, Missy, Zimmerman, Cheryl, & Allen, Patrick. (2008). Put Thinking to the test. Portland: Stenhouse Pub.