OLSAT^® preparation with Kindergarten Test Study System

Skills to practice to prepare your child for testing are: Listening and Following Directions, Classification, Verbal Reasoning, Analogies, Arithmetic, and Sequencing.  

Listening and Following Directions
Listening is a basic academic skill.  But its complexity and importance cannot be overestimated.  In order to learn anything, a child first needs to hear, remember, and understand the information that’s being taught.  Visual cues, and sometimes even tactile cues, can help children to better understand spoken information.  But, ultimately, it’s spoken information that’s the key to learning for young children.  Although older children can rely on written information in academic settings, younger children primarily rely on spoken information.  For example, tests for older children are administered mostly through written information, but tests for younger children are usually administered via spoken information. 

KTSS can help children use the listening skills they already have and build confidence in applying them to a test-like format.     

Classification
If you've watched Sesame Street, you may have seen a segment where a character sings "one of these things is not like the others," and shows some things (e.g., a shoe, a boot, a sock, and a hat), and asks children to figure out which thing doesn't belong. What children are doing (without realizing it) is deciding what similar details comprise the category (e.g., things that go on my feet) and classifying which thing doesn't belong (e.g., the hat).

KTSS encourages discussion where children can explain why the thing they’ve chosen doesn’t belong.  The script gives a format to do it logically, --i.e., “the one that doesn’t belong is. . . . and the others are. . . .”  When children explain what the category is, and what distinguishes the thing that’s NOT in the category, then they are encouraged to carefully evaluate choices and distinguish between relevant and irrelevant details.  This gives them experience with careful thinking and persistence.

Verbal Reasoning
Verbal Reasoning requires children to make sense of spoken logic puzzles and “common sense” questions.  One thing that can confuse children about logic puzzles and common sense questions is that even though there may be a “best” answer, there are often other answers that can be logically deducted.  With practice, children have the opportunity to build confidence giving their best answer, and also gain experience in questioning their own logic process to assure them that their answer is not only logical, but also is the “best” answer. 

Analogies
Analogies teach children how relationships are similar to one another.  For example, even though “dogs” generally have nothing to do with “squares,” the relationship between a big dog and a little dog is like the relationship between a big square and a little square.  The underlying concept is one of size.    

This section covers four types of analogies that reflect:  1)      change in relative degree, such as size or number (e.g., three dogs and one dog go together in the same way as three eggs and one egg),  2)      part of a whole (e.g., a single rose is part of a whole bouquet),  3)      change in position (e.g., a sun moving across the top of a square is like the same sun moving in the same direction at the bottom of the square), and 4) knowledge of typical functions, categories, or locations (e.g., a fish is typically found in an aquarium much like a cow is typically found in a barnyard).

Although it may be enough to simply answer the questions, discussion of the relationships can solidify clear thinking about analogies. 

Arithmetic
Although your child may be too young to be formally taught arithmetic, he or she has an implicit understanding of basic concepts and so can reason arithmetically. For example, if you show your child four cookies, and say that you and your child will share them equally, your child will be sure to get his or her share. If your child makes a mistake, you can bet that the "mistake" is on purpose and that your child is the one with the most cookies. This section familiarizes children with the basic critical thinking skills that underlie the following basic arithmetic functions: counting and relative amounts, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions.

Sequencing
A sequence is a series of pictures or figures that follows a logical order where the task is to predict what comes next. There are 6 common types. These are sequences of pictures that: 1) fit a rhythmic pattern (first black, then white, then black, and so on), 2) show movement (e.g., a square rotating position), 3) increase or decrease in size, number, or some other characteristic, 4) make a complete visual image, 5) are a matrix (i.e., fit into a grid that shows a pattern), and 6) tell a story. KTSS helps children to understand and appropriately think about these types of sequential problems.