Help Halt Test Anxiety
from EdWorld At Home |
Here they
are: a list of top-5 things you the parent can do to help alleviate
standardized testing pressures.
5.
First of all, realize that some (but of course not all) “testiness” that goes
around the house might be related to tests. While the “accountability movement”
has its supporters, detractors, and experts who disagree about what it is in
the first place, there’s no doubt that testing is a bigger deal than it used to
be. If a kid’s showing impatience, etc., it might be worth asking (later on,
perhaps) if he or she is sweating a test.
4.
Okay, if you find out your kid is sweating a test; the next step is to sort
what kind of test it is. A Friday spelling quiz shouldn’t cause same kind of
anxiety as a state mandated standardized test, but especially with younger
kids, they might not know that. They might know that there’s a whole lotta
testin’ goin’ on, but not really understand that various tests are of various
degrees of importance. It’s always best to do your best, but don’t inflate the
importance of a Friday spelling quiz unnecessarily.
3.
Deal with the “globally overwhelmed” child. In other words, perhaps test
anxiety is just part of an overall feeling of losing control. Especially in
middle school, kids are suddenly overwhelmed. One reason for this is that they
are juggling more tasks, yet still may be depending on whatever old habits
they’d developed in elementary school for keeping up. Sometimes this hits
hardest the kids who are accustomed to being successful in school. They haven’t
had to write down their assignments, for example, because they really have had
elementary school (one teacher with a couple pull-outs, for example) mastered.
Suddenly, there are more assignments, multiple teachers (who may or may not
coordinate to present the child with one simple calendar), and each task is
bigger than before. Sports, music, dance, etc., also become more demanding in
middle school. How to deal with the swamped kid? Well, first of all, explain
that it’s normal to get swamped and to have to learn techniques like keeping a
to-do list. If you can pick a moment when you’re not having to reconstruct your
child’s homework from archaeological layers of papers in their room, it might
help, by the way!
2.
Help by understanding the scope of the test, so that you can also put that in
perspective for your kid. A “big history test” can be kind of an intimidating
prospect, especially if a kid has been resisting the work and isn’t sure
whether World War I or the dinosaurs came first. Kids can have a tendency to
exaggerate (a lot! I mean, really, a million times over!), and finding out that
the “big history test” involves knowing the names of the 13 original colonies
can give you a feeling of confidence that you just might be able to coach your
young historian to a reasonable degree of success on this one. Of course,
finding out that your young Churchill has left a whole semester’s studying to
the Sunday night before the semester final would be another matter, and
probably would require more of a long-term approach to correcting some very
poor time management.
1.
In addition to reassuring your kid that test anxiety is something that
everybody experiences, it’s important to link preparation and results in your
kid’s mind, so that the testing does what it really should do – make your kid a
more industrious student! Make sure your young test-taker knows that the more
and better preparation he or she puts in, the better his or her resulting test
grade is going to be. Make sure he or she understands that the next test will
most likely be a more pleasant experience if he or she totally keeps up with
the homework and studies hard.
That said,
you might also remain alert to the possibility of asking for help from a school
psychologist. Most of the time, of course, test anxiety is temporary,
manageable, and your kid will get through it just fine. Severe test anxiety,
however, might be an issue to get help on. Like so many things in parenting,
it’s your judgment!
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