We can use Smarter Balanced Items in our daily instruction and the for the SBAC assessments. We can use the item types to model some of the questions we ask in class. The time to go over item types is long before the day of the test. During the SBAC Summative test student must answer each question in order to move one. This means if they don't know how to answer an item like a Hot Text, Selected Response they can't move on. It has not been uncommon for a student to be stuck on one item because they didn't know how to answer the question. One general hint to share with students is that when an answer is possible the cursor changes to a hand.  This is not true for all answers like constructed responses. Click on the title or example to watch a video example of each item.

One easy way to explore the item types with students to by using the Smarter balanced Sample Items Webpage found at http://sampleitems.smarterbalanced.org/BrowseItems