Thinking through a test

I find that as I prepare for the state assessments, I am spending time using the strategies in "Thinking through a test". I display a story on the projector, as well as having a copy in front of each of the students. We review titles and any subheadings and talk about what the main idea of the story may be based on these. We review the questions before reading the story so that we have these in mind as we are reading the passage. Students are encouraged to underline words and passages as they read, so that they are able to easily come back to these important places in the text. This has been successful with most of my students, while seeming to make no difference with a few of them.