As teachers begin shaping lessons for the common standards, many are wondering how to prepare their students for tests that won't be ready for at least two years. Sample items being drafted for those exams offer early ideas of what lies ahead. Two large groups of states are using federal Race to the Top money to create new suites of exams for the Common Core State Standards. Those consortia have recently begun work with private vendors to develop items--questions and tasks--for the tests. But each group has produced a range of sample test items to help those vendors get an idea of what the states want, and experts say they offer valuable insight into the tests that are expected to emerge in 2014-2015. Sample items for the English/language arts exams, crafted by work groups of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium in conjunction with test-makers ETS and Measured Progress, offer a glimpse of what that group has in mind. One selected-response item asks 5th graders to read an article about how scientists track bird migration and to identify the two paragraphs that contain the author's opinions on the topic. The question taps key skills required in the common standards, such as comprehending "content rich" nonfiction and citing textual evidence for an argument. A constructed-response item for 11th graders asks them to read excerpts from an 1872 speech by women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony and the "Second Treatise of Civil Government" by English philosopher John Locke, published in 1690. They must identify the ideas common to both pieces and discuss how Locke's ideas support Anthony's arguments, citing evidence from each to support their interpretations. One of the aspects of the consortia's work that represents perhaps the greatest departure from current state testing practice is the inclusion of performance tasks, which engage students in more complex, prolonged exercises. The sample task, scheduled to take 105 minutes, asks 6th graders to read an interview with a teenager who started a charity to help Peruvian orphans. It directs them to articles and videos on specified Web pages to learn more about other young people who devote themselves to helping those in need. The students answer constructed-response questions that require them to describe what they've learned, analyze the meanings of key words, and discuss how they evaluated the reliability of their Web resources. They must research and present a five-minute speech about a "young wonder" of their choice, complete with audiovisual representations.