FCIT has produced online, self-paced test prep courses are specifically designed to help prepare students to take the Professional Education and the General Knowledge: Reading, Math, English Language Skills and Essay subtests on the Florida Teacher Certification Exam. This post discusses the GKT Reading Test.
It is no surprise that many people find passing the reading subtest difficult. With multiple passages and questions to read, correctly answering 40 questions in 55 minutes is quite a challenge. One of the key items in passing this exam is to know how to appropriately pace yourself. Some participants get stuck in the details only to realize too late that they have eaten up too much time without answering a question.
Spend two or three minutes only per passage, and then take about one minute to answer each question. The reading subtest involves a split screen where the passages are on the top and each question and answer choices are beneath. Quickly click through to see the number of questions in that passage so you know about how much time you should take for that passage. Some passages will only have five questions and others may have more than a dozen.
In preparing for her exam, one participant felt our course was very beneficial to her success and felt overall better prepared to take the exam. When following up with her after she successfully passed the exam, she said, “the video links really helped me in breaking up the text and pacing myself.” – Alexandria Wilson
Another participant commented,
“I took the exam March 5th and I passed all sections, those online courses really helped! Reading was spot on- it looked exactly like the test. I’m so glad I practiced timing in the reading course because that’s what really helped me.” – Sophia Vera
Pacing is key as it allows you more flexibility in how you spend your time. It also helps you to focus in on the most important information. You cannot expect yourself to memorize all the details in the text and just simply remember them.
GKT Reading
This online, self-paced course includes authentic practice tests, explicit instruction, practice flashcards, authentic reading passages, and interactive general knowledge quizzes to help prepare you to take the Reading portion of the General Knowledge Test of the Florida Teacher Certification Exam. New course sections begin on the 1st of each month and run for 8 weeks.
In the GKT Reading course you will:
- Familiarize yourself with the GKT Reading test structure
- Assess your level of readiness
- Develop individualized study and test plans
- Practice essential Reading subtest competencies and skills—
- Key Ideas and Details Based on Text Selections
- Craft Structure Based on Text Selections
- Integration of Information and Ideas Based on Text Selections
- Learn to interpret your GKT Reading score reports
Some of the most common distractors in the exam are…
- Providing explicit information (directly from text) when an inferential question is being asked.
- This is challenging because you see that answer in the text and so you might quickly answer it.
- Make sure you understand the difference between “according to the passage” and “the passage suggests.”
- Taking an objective passage that might contain a controversial topic and providing answer choices that are highly opinionated.
- This is challenging because you might personally feel strongly about the topic and impose your own beliefs in your answer selections. Your beliefs will be reinforced as you see similar answer choices in subsequent questions.
- Offering answer choices that are too specific or too broad for the question asked.
- Giving answer choices that match the question well but not necessarily the text/image.
- For example, you may need to title a picture according to the passage or maybe just according to the picture. You must read these questions carefully and identify what it is asking.
The passages are long, dense and typically uninteresting. You must seek the most important information to hold onto by asking questions such as “what’s the point, what’s the main idea, why is the author writing this, how are they conveying their message? (organization, content- word choice)”. When you are studying, it may be helpful to highlight and write these down. Just keep in mind, that you cannot do this on the actual exam.
When you reflect on your practice tests (and keep in mind practice tests are not created equal), what do you notice about what you miss?
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