If you’re aiming to land a job as a paraprofessional, then it is extremely important that you manage to pass the ParaPro test in order to show the school district of your choice that you have the cognitive skills necessary to take on the role of a teacher’s aide.
After all, it will be part of your job to help students understand the topics or even subjects that they are having troubles with.
Since each state has a different passing score for the exam, it is absolutely necessary for you to go the extra mile and pass ParaPro test score requirements so that you will only have to worry about the training and other certifications needed.
The Math Test
There are a number of reasons why students have troubles with math, but even if this is due to mental or developmental issues, it will be part of your job to figure out a way on how they can overcome this, especially if they ask you for help.
This means that you will need to show a good grasp on a number of mathematical concepts so that you can explain the ‘shortcuts’ or teach them tips on how to solve them easily.
At the very least, you can expect questions about the basic operations, functions, systems and equations, as well as fractions and decimals to appear in the math portion of the ParaPro test.
On the other hand, however, there will be tougher subjects to tackle such as number sense, basic algebra, geometry, measurement conversion, and data analysis.
The Reading Test
This part of the assessment is quite simple: you will be given a passage around a paragraph or so long, and you will need to extract the information that the question is asking you to look for.
Although there can be various types of questions such as searching for an author’s intent, bias, inferences, among others, the method of looking for the correct answer remains the same: you need to have a good amount of reading comprehension skills.
Reading comprehension, after all, is a vital skill to have in the workplace, not just if you’re aiming for a job as a paraprofessional where you need to understand the text of a book so that you can explain it in a simpler way for students to understand.
The Writing Test
As a future teacher’s assistant, you will need to have a good grasp on the English Standard.
This means that you need to have sufficient, or even perfect, grammar skills so that students can look up to you and strive to do the same when it comes to their essay or report writing activities.
Here, you will encounter questions that will revolve around the foundations of grammar and punctuation, sentence structure, parts of an essay, and many others.
One of the easiest questions to encounter in this test is the ‘error checking’ questions where you will have to select which part of the sentence contains an error, while the hardest can revolve around needing to identify which of the provided choices is the best one to choose based on the MLA formatting rules.
How to Prepare for the ParaPro Test
Check the passing score for your state
Before anything else, check what is the passing score for the ParaPro exam for your state so that you can have a good idea of what you need to achieve on test day because the qualifying score varies completely from state to state.
Get as much practice as you can
Due to the timed nature of the exam, where you need to answer 90 questions in around 2 and ½ hours, it will be extremely important for you to dust off any high school or college books that you may have so that you can review its contents with renewed focus.
Using the questions available in these books, you will be able to create a practice test of your own, especially if you weren’t able to answer them the first time around.
Consider online resources
If you’re short on time or you need more help in preparing for the ParaPro test, then there is no shame in turning to online resources where both in-depth study guides and expansive practice tests are readily available.
Get enough rest before test day
One of the worst things that you can do on test-day is to take this exam tired or not fully rested.
With how mentally exhausting it is, and with peer or even financial pressure looming over you, the last thing that you’d need is being unable to focus enough to figure out the correct answers in the exam.