Book excerpt: New and Updated for the Common Core State Standards and the New 2014-2015 Smarter Balanced Assessments! Provides Ongoing Skill Development and Practice - Provides ten practice sets for ongoing test preparation and skill development - Begins with two short practice sets to introduce students to testing - Continues with eight 60-minute practice sets to give students the experience they need to perform well on assessments - Covers all the skills in the Common Core State Standards - Prepares students for the question types found on the state tests Preparation for the Smarter Balanced (SBAC) Assessments - Covers the same skills as the Smarter Balanced assessments - Provides practice completing selected-response, constructed-response, and technology-enhanced questions - More rigorous questions prepare students for the higher difficulty of the new assessments - Full answer key lists the Common Core skill assessed by each question One Book, Eight Key Benefits - Develop and build on all the Common Core skills that students need - Build confidence by using the tests to improve student performance - Reduce test anxiety by allowing low-stress practice - Ensure students are comfortable with a range of question formats - Introduce students to the more complex tasks found on the Smarter Balanced assessments - Help students prepare for the more rigorous Smarter Balanced assessments - Use the full answer key and skills list to identify gaps in knowledge and target revision accordingly - Use the practice sets for testing, revision, and retesting