Tips For Dealing With Test Stress

Many kids enter the panic zone right when a test is announced. Often the panic is temporary and often it controls the students' performance on tests. In any case, we as teachers need to neutralize the negative effect of tests. Their performance has a direct effect on their own self-esteem. Consider the following ways to ease test anxiety.

Just keep in mind that when we talk about tests, it is important to realize that testing is not the only means a teacher has for obtaining an authentic picture of a student.

Creating Meaningful Performance Assessments

Kids make up their own test questions based on the material you have taught them. You provide a rubric for how you plan on assessing their questions. Kids interact with the material and become "experts." You then choose the questions and it becomes their test. They can also be responsible for marking it depending on how much control you want to give your students.

Depending on how open you are to the alternative assessment methods, you can also incorporate oral presentations, or other meaningful performance assessments such as projects and open your standard based curriculum even more.

Traditional Test Format

Most kids are very nervous before an exam. I have found that kids thrive when they are given tips before a test.

On a general rule of thumb, when a test is administered with limited work and preparation, students feel they need to compensate and so they resort to cheating, write more than needed, or don't read and understand the question properly because they are under pressure. These tips can range from time management, blockouts, to learning strategies to help them cope with the test format.

 

Under the traditional test format, do you give them any 'tips' about how to cope?

Final Assessment.

After marking and returning the papers, you may want to consider going over the tests in classes or demand any follow-up work on the part of the students. An important issue facing assessment is deciding the weight of traditional tests or performance based tests, depending on which assessment process you believe in.