The Text Dependent Analysis (TDA) portion of the Forward Exam tends to be an area of difficulty for students. To help provide clarification for students, teachers are encouraged to:
- Provide students with instructional opportunities throughout the school year where the expectation is to read a text, reflect on the text to develop an idea, and write a constructed response in a single setting for roughly 30-60 minutes. The benefit is having students learn how to manage time to complete all three portions of this task (read, reflect, respond) within a single time period.
- Provide students with background on how to create a quality constructed response. The key features to highlight with students include stating your opinion/topic sentence, identifying your text evidence, and providing rationale for how that text evidence supports your topic sentence.
- Schedule time for students to try the Forward Exam Practice Test and Sample Items, specifically the Online Training Tools. Once in the Online Training Tools, have students go to the Item Sampler and try grade level appropriate ELA Item Sampler, specifically Session 1 for the TDA. This provides students with an experience of this test platform before the actual assessment to provide concept of task and navigation.
