5 Things Parents Can Do Right Now to Help With SOL Prep

SOL season has a way of sneaking up. One day you're settled into the school-year routine, and the next you're reading a note from the teacher about spring testing. The good news is that the most effective SOL prep doesn't require tutors, expensive workbooks, or marathon study sessions. It requires consistency, the right materials, and a low-pressure environment — all things parents can set up at home starting today.

Here are five concrete things you can do right now, regardless of your child's grade or subject.

1. Make practice sessions short — and daily

The research on learning and memory is consistent: spaced repetition beats massed practice. Ten minutes of focused SOL practice every day is worth more than a two-hour session on Sunday. Short sessions fit into the existing routine without creating a "big deal" around testing, and they let the brain consolidate what it learned before the next session builds on it.

A useful target is 10–15 minutes on school days. That's one episode of a favorite show shortened, or the time between dinner and homework. The key is doing it at the same time each day so it becomes habit rather than negotiation. If your child resists, start smaller: five questions, no timer, no pressure. Build from there.

2. Practice with real VDOE questions — not generic test prep

Virginia SOL questions have a distinctive style. They use specific vocabulary, specific question structures, and test specific standards — and that specificity matters more than it might seem. A child who has only practiced with generic reading comprehension worksheets may struggle not because they don't understand the content, but because the question format is unfamiliar.

The Virginia Department of Education releases actual test questions from prior years, organized by grade and subject. These are the gold standard for practice because they're written by the same team that writes the real test. SolPrep is built entirely from these released questions — every question your child sees on the platform appeared on an actual Virginia SOL test. There is no substitute for practicing with the real thing.

3. Read the score report and target the weak spots

If your child has already taken an SOL test — or a school-administered benchmark that mirrors the SOL format — you likely received a score report. Most parents look at the overall score, note whether it's passing or not, and stop there. The most valuable part of the report is actually the reporting category breakdown at the bottom.

Virginia SOL score reports divide the test into reporting categories — for example, a Grade 5 Math report might show separate scores for "Number and Number Sense," "Computation and Estimation," and "Measurement and Geometry." A child can score 450 overall (passing) while still scoring below proficiency in one or two specific categories. Those categories are exactly where practice time should go. Unfocused review of everything is less efficient than targeted review of the actual gaps.

4. Use the accommodations your child already has

If your child has an IEP or 504 plan, their accommodations don't only apply in school — they reflect how your child actually learns best. A child who is approved for text-to-speech on the SOL should be practicing with text-to-speech at home. A child who gets extended time on assessments shouldn't be doing timed practice at home that creates the same anxiety the accommodation was designed to remove.

One of the reasons SolPrep was built the way it was is that most test prep tools don't offer the accommodations that are in children's IEPs. The platform includes text-to-speech, dyslexia font, bionic reading, high contrast mode, extended time (timer removal), and step-by-step hints — all toggleable from a parent dashboard. Practicing with your child's actual accommodations active helps them build familiarity with both the content and the format they'll use on test day.

5. Keep it low-stakes at home

Test anxiety is real — research suggests it affects 25–40% of students — and it's especially disruptive when a child has absorbed the message that the SOL is a Big Important Test with Consequences. The irony is that children who are most anxious about tests also tend to study the hardest, which means their actual knowledge often exceeds their test-day performance.

The antidote is familiarity, not pressure. When practice is routine, calm, and consequence-free, the test format stops feeling like a threat. You want your child to sit down on test day and think "I've seen this kind of question before" — not "I can't mess this up." That means keeping the energy around home practice relaxed. Don't make a big deal of wrong answers. Celebrate the process of sitting down and doing it, not just the score.

Concretely: no timers unless your child is comfortable with them, no score reviews that feel like a report card, and no last-minute cramming the week before the test. The goal is to make the SOL feel familiar before your child ever walks into the testing room.

One more thing: start before the testing window

Virginia's spring SOL testing window runs from late April through early June. That feels far away in October, but the families who see the biggest improvement are the ones who started months earlier — not because they studied harder, but because they gave the spaced repetition time to work.

Starting now means your child has roughly 25–30 weeks of daily short sessions before the first test. That's a meaningful amount of practice — enough to cover every reporting category, revisit weak spots multiple times, and build genuine confidence rather than last-minute cramming.

Start practicing free at SolPrep

SolPrep is a free Virginia SOL practice platform built by a Virginia parent for kids in grades 3–8. Every question comes from VDOE's released test materials, the platform includes the accommodations listed in this post, and there's no paywall, no subscription, and no ads.

Create a free account and set up a child profile in under two minutes at solprep.app/signup. Pick a grade and subject, and your child can start with real SOL questions today.