So you’ve taken your first year of the Smarter Balanced online assessments and now you’re looking for places for your students to get more practice.
Don’t worry! Free Smarter Balanced examples, practice exams, and test samples exist and they are readily available. The best part is, you don’t even need to scour the Internet to find them!

Smarter Balanced (SBAC) online practice resources

Below is a quick listing of free online resources you can use to help your students practice for the Smarter Balanced online assessments:

Smarter Balanced Practice Tests

• This is the official SBAC practice test. After clicking the “Student Interface Practice Test” button, your students will be asked to sign in and select the grade level and subject they would like to practice.The content covers grades 3-8 and grade 11 for both Math and English Language Arts (ELA). Students can practice both the official functionality of the online tests as well as the depth of knowledge required by the sample questions.You can access the practice tests here, as well as learn more about the SBAC’s text-to-speech functionality, performance task writing rubrics, and scoring guides. The scope of the tests seem a bit limited, but they certainly offer a good jumping-off point.
  The SBAC online practice tests are compatible with the following web browsers:
  
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Google Chrome
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 10
  • Apple Safari

Smarter Balanced Online Calculator

• In addition to the online assessments, 6-8th grade students and 11th grade students taking the Smarter Balanced tests will also be given the ability to utilize an online calculator.You can access samples of the Basic online calculators here. The samples include:
  
  • A basic calculator (6th grade)
  • A scientific calculator (7th and 8th grade)
  • A high school calculator (11th grade)

Oregon Dept. of Education’s Smarter Balanced Resources

• Oregon is already ahead of the game when it comes to online assessments (they were administering online tests years prior to the formation of the SBAC). Following suit with their “on-the-ball” online assessment attitude, Oregon offers a great grouping of Smarter Balanced resources to its teachers and students.Using documents provided by Smarter Balanced, Oregon has compiled a robust set of sample test items that you can sift through by subject, “claim”, and grade level. Obviously, these tools are directed towards Oregon-based educators, but they can serve as a good starting point for anyone who is seeking to learn a little bit more about the SBAC’s scope and functionality.You can access the Oregon DOE’s Smarter Balanced resources here.
  

More SBAC preparation resources

In addition to the practice test and sample items links, I wanted to share a few more resources with you that may help with your school’s Smarter Balanced preparation measures.

• “Sample Items and Performance Tasks Frequently Asked Questions” – Smarter Balanced
• “Common Core Assessments Release Calculator Guidelines” – Wowzers Blog
• “Answering the Question: What are the Smarter Balanced Online Math Assessments” – Wowzers Blog
• “10 Key Online Common Core Math Assessment Terms and Actions” – Wowzers Blog

Tell us about your students’ SBAC practice efforts!

Obviously, these few resources are not the end-all-be-all of Smarter Balanced practice test and sample item resources (hint, hint, Wowzers). We’d love to hear about what you are doing in your classroom to help students prepare for online testing!
Start your conversation on our Facebook Page or Tweet us at @Wowzers!