How to Make ELA Test Prep Fun and Engaging

It’s that time of year again. Test Prep season! ELA Teachers are prepping for state testing—cue the highlighters, the pacing guides, the acronyms (RACE, anyone?), and the collective groan of “Test Prep Season.” Reviewing for state tests doesn’t have to mean endless packets and practice questions that drain the joy out of your classroom. In fact, with a little creativity, you can review the standards, the skills, and keep your students smiling.

Here are fun, brain-boosting activities to help your students review ELA skills without the monotony of drill-and-kill:

“Trashketball” with a Test Prep Twist

I love Trashketball, and I play this with my students all the time to review vocabulary. Divide your class into teams. Ask standards-based review questions—academic vocabulary, multiple choice, short answer, or grammar corrections. If a team gets it right, they earn a shot at the trashcan with a crumpled piece of paper. Different distances earn different point values. Suddenly, reviewing test terms becomes a slam dunk.

Check out these Academic Vocabulary Posters and References Worksheets for your students and classroom:

Escape Rooms

Students love escape rooms because they are fun, exciting, and competitive. The bonus? Teachers can disguise the learning with a fun activity. Turn your classroom into a test prep-themed escape room! Build puzzles around key skills like main idea, theme, text structure, grammar, and writing prompts. Each correct answer leads them closer to “breaking free” or “breaking out”. Escape rooms build collaboration, critical thinking, and confidence.

No time to build your own? Check out this Test Prep Digital Escape Room aligned with your standards. This NO PREP activity has your students solving clues on text structures, figurative language, literary devices, words in context, reading comprehension, main idea, author’s purpose, and other skills to improve their knowledge in ELA test-taking.

Test Prep Review Relay Races

Set up stations around the room, each with a different type of ELA task (inferencing, poetry analysis, text evidence, etc.). Students rotate in teams, racing the clock to complete the tasks. Add in silly challenges like “answer this while wearing giant sunglasses” for extra fun. Making activities entertaining means getting students out of their seats!

Sticky Note Showdown

Give each student a stack of sticky notes. Pose a review question, and they write their answer (or evidence) on the note and slap it on the board. Then read through and discuss the strong ones, misconceptions, and clever responses. It’s anonymous, low-stakes, and highly interactive. You can also have your students walk around the room, voting for the most insightful and interesting sticky note!

Scavenger Hunts

Want to sneak in high-impact reading practice without the groans? Try a nonfiction or poetry scavenger hunt! Provide short texts or poems around the room, and give students a list of specific skills to “hunt” for—like figurative language, text structure, tone, or main idea. These hunts are perfect for practicing those often-tricky standards that show up on state tests, especially when students need to compare across genres. By actively searching and annotating, they’re doing the same cognitive work required on the test—but in a way that feels more like a game than a grind. Plus, it gets them up, moving, and talking about texts—triple win!

Let’s be real. State testing isn’t going anywhere, but your review sessions can be meaningful and memorable. The key is to sneak in rigorous practice under the disguise of play, movement, and choice. When students are engaged, they’re more likely to retain the strategies and skills that count.

Happy test taking season!