ELKHART — The classroom will be quiet when they take the test, but in preparation, Mary Beck Elementary students were welcomed to make some noise and have some fun during a Thursday afternoon event to get students and families energized for the Indiana Statewide Testing for Education Progress-Plus (ISTEP+).

Beck staff made a goal of “just getting them pumped up, like you would for a game,” according to Michelle Atayde, Beck’s parent resource coordinator.

The night included cheers from the school’s cheerleaders about ISTEP+, a quiz game between students and parents using ISTEP+ questions and reminders from the school’s principals about how parents can help their kids prepare for the tests.

John Hill, Elkhart’s director of curriculum and instruction, said that Elkhart’s Title 1 schools, those with the highest percentages of students on free and reduced lunches, are really focusing on engaging parents in test preparation.

For the most part, though, ISTEP+ preparation goes on all 180 days of school.

“The idea is to prepare kids for high-stakes tests literally almost daily,” Hill said. Kids should be able to sit down to take a test and say, “Oh, we do this everyday,” he explained.

Test results show if students individually meet Indiana Academic Standards, according to the Indiana Department of Education, and are also used by the state in determining a grade for each school building and school corporation.

Students’ ISTEP+ scores and the growth they show will largely determine building and corporations’ grades under the new A to F Accountability System.

Several Elkhart County administrators emphasized that the learning that goes on daily at schools is what’s needed for the test.

“We teach what needs to be taught the way the kids learn and the test will take care of itself,” Bryan Waltz, Concord’s director of elementary curriculum, said about Concord’s approach.

Tamra Ummel, Goshen’s executive director of elementary education, said that she believes Goshen prepares students by teaching the content from the Indiana Academic Standards. Teachers integrate test-taking strategies — like getting students to go through steps to understand what a question is asking and to be persistent if they don’t have an answer at first — with teaching content.

“We don’t stop instruction to teach to the test,” she said.

Plenty of local schools do have some additional initiatives to help students prepare.

Schools can make use of practice or preparatory assessments to gauge where individual students are and in what areas they need improvement.

In Elkhart schools, teachers are also able to do “Test Talks,” in which teachers chat with each student individually about what they are doing well and where they can improve.

“Rather than every student do more and more problems ... this pinpoints what you’re already able to do,” Hill said.

Jane Allen, Middlebury’s director of curriculum and instruction, said that students practice writing daily, but in preparation for the ISTEP+ work on writing in response to a prompt. Students at Middlebury elementary buildings also do “Number Talks,” in which students talk about how they get their answers in math problems, which helps prepare students for some math applied skills questions, she said.

Administrators also emphasized the role of parents in preparing for the standardized tests.

“The parents play probably as large a role as the student in getting rest and getting as good as possible nutrition, which are factors in test-taking,” Elkhart’s Hill explained.

Along with getting a full night’s sleep — “not just the night before a test, but all the time” — and eating nutritious meals, Hill said parents should make sure their children are doing some kind of work from school every evening, whether that’s homework, practicing problems or otherwise. For parents with students in Elkhart schools, they can ask if they’ve had a Test Talk and what teachers said they have mastered and what needs additional work and prompt them to work on those areas.

“They can play a role, they can do things at home that can effect student performance,” Hill said.

The Indiana Department of Education sets “testing windows” during which schools must administer the ISTEP+ tests. This year, students must take the applied skills section between March 5 and March 13. The multiple choice window is set for April 30 to June 9. Between those times, from March 19 to 21, Indiana third-graders will take the Indiana Reading Evaluation and Determination (IREAD-3) test, which students must pass to continue onto fourth grade.

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