best test prep book to use for IOWA/ITBS?

[Stacia]

My dd will be taking the 4th grade IOWA/ITBS standardized test this year. Which test prep book would be the best choice for doing some practice ahead of time?

Thanks!

[claire up north]

We order our ITBS tests through BJUPress. They offer a series called "Better Test Scores." These provide a fine review and also go over some basic test taking skills.

I ordered all three of them for 4th grade (math, language arts & reading), but we didn't work through all of the material. My son is strong in math, so we just did the practice test to have him get a feel for the questions. In Language Arts, we did pretty much everything so he could get used to finding mistakes like missing periods and quotations. My son reads well, so we just did the pretest here, too.

Just doing what we did, we spent about 30 to 45 minutes a day for 5 days on test prep. If you need to do more, make sure you schedule accordingly.

Also, I have two other kids coming up behind this one. I did not allow mine to write in the workbooks so that I can use them with my other children.

hth!

[AngieW in Texas]

I have only used a test prep book the first time my kids have tested. I used Spectrum for my older girls and Flashkids for my youngest. They're really about the same. I switched to Flashkids for my youngest because she likes their layout a lot better than Spectrum. Flashkids didn't exist when my two older girls tested for the first time.

You can get workbooks that are specifically for the ITBS through BJU. I think you can order them through Rainbow Resource. The Scoring High series has workbooks for specific tests.

[nestof3]

I like the Spectrum Test Prep series.