We know that the GED demands a lot of our students; however, a closer look at the thinking behind these demands will help us better prepare our students for the five-test battery. The demands within the math and writing sections of the GED belong to a category called "procedural knowledge," meaning the content can be rapidly acquired despite lack of prior knowledge or experience.

In contrast, social studies, science, and reading test material falls into the very different category of "declarative knowledge," where one must have years of reading experience to successfully handle the content. Because most GED programs enroll students for months rather than years, declarative knowledge must be approached through creating lessons where material is made immediately relevant, thus encouraging confidence and familiarity with test content.

What this means for the classroom is that we, as teachers, need to find ways to help bring students closer to the material. Since our students need to know both the meaning of something, such as plate tectonics, for example, as well as be familiar with it as a concept, I have been planning my lessons by allowing my students to make personal connections to science and social studies. With regard to plate tectonics specifically, I begin by asking my students to briefly write their thoughts about experiencing an earthquake or a nearby volcanic explosion. After we've begun thinking and talking about having lost many possessions or loved ones or about the destruction caused to neighborhoods, businesses, and schools, we read an excerpt from Jack London's "Story of an Eyewitness," about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Once we have linked science to real life, we move into what causes earthquakes, thus introducing vocabulary through conversation. Visualization through a personal lens is vital to learning and is essential for retention of material. Once there is a personal or human dimension to any topic, the content becomes more accessible and will be more rapidly acquired.

Making a Personal Link
The American Council on Education states that 50 percent of the new science GED test is conceptual understanding and 50 percent is problem solving. Because the scope of the science material is so vast, I find the most effective approach is to first invite the students' attention through a personal link and then to make one's lessons as much skill-based as content-based. So, while it's important to know that air pollution causes health problems, it's also important to gain familiarity with cause-and-effect relationships.

This is not to suggest that we should run to printed material and photocopy sections on cause-and-effect. Inundating students with hundreds of examples of cause-and-effect won't help as much as a handful of meaningful conversations surrounding relevant cause-and-effect relationships. After I witnessed one of my students giving her 10-month-old daughter a bottle of Pepsi, I developed a series of lesson plans on nutrition that began with research-based readings and open discussions, leading us into critical questions, essential skill building, and GED test-related vocabulary and content. The second piece to this strategy is to make sure that the conversation is revisited so that the words and concepts introduced there find real purpose and become familiar to the students.

This same approach can be utilized in social studies. Primary sources offer a perfect springboard into helping students view economics, civics, historical events, and even government with a human and personal dimension. Again, the scope of the material on this test is intimidating, so it's unlikely that we can cover all 50 questions. However, through holding organized and purposeful discussions with our students, we can cover more material than if we held a series of short information-based lessons. Furthermore, a meaningful discussion does more than just cover material—it includes our students in a manner that truly engages them.

For example, when teaching the Great Depression, I open my lesson with photos and personal accounts from that period. I then ask my students to imagine where the photos are from and what happened to these people. In order to ensure that the economic and political concepts embedded within this topic are covered, I have a "discussion map," which I use to remind myself what essential words and ideas should be written on the board in an organized fashion.

There are many topics that lend themselves to this type of teaching where we can pull in a variety of vocabulary and ideas that students will need in order to manage the test material successfully.

The "usual suspects" of GED questions (main idea, fact versus opinion, restating information, making inferences, and cause-and-effect) are still lurking in these tests, but the demand of applying a given idea in a new context is looming larger than ever on both tests. We see this manifested on the practice tests by the increase in single-item questions in which students are given a brief explanation of something (such as ultraviolet radiation or supply and demand) and then asked to choose the answer that best applies to that concept. Questions that require students to apply declarative knowledge tend to be some of the hardest for our students, but if this skill is learned in the company and safety of other learners and practiced over a few months' time, it will become easier.

A lack of declarative knowledge hurts our students, but we can fill this gap through having relevant, organized, and meaningful discussions that offer the content necessary to pass these tests.

Sandy Little teaches 16-to-21-year-olds from Roxbury and Dorchester at ESAC (Ensuring Stability through Action in the Community). She plans to enter a PhD program next year. She can be reached at: s.j.little@att.net.