Partner Contest Test Prep Strategy

My students love anything that has a competition built into it. Let’s face it, we all give a little extra when there are bragging rights involved, and they are no different. To make boring test prep questions a bit more fun, I institute a little partner competition in the classroom.

What I love most about this is that all you need is a packet of test prep questions for each set of partners. I have been using multi-step problems from my own store as the questions.

How to Have a Partner Contest

The rules are simple:

You work collaboratively with your partner to solve the problems in the packet. I use the phrase, “No hogs and no logs,” to encourage students to share the work.

Each problem you solve with your partner correctly earns you 2 points.
A problem that I help you and your partner to solve you get 1 point.
Each incorrect problem earns you a goose egg.

I have found that having a question that they are helped on still earn points encourages students to ask me questions because they would rather get one point than none at all.

In the end, I tally up all the points earned by each partnership and the partners with the most points win bragging rights. Sometimes I throw in a little prize, but not always.

This has been a great strategy for test prep that has worked wonders in both reading and math practice!