Tips and Tricks for Students

Prepping for exams, both mid-terms or finals begins at the start of the term.

If you reviewed just 10 minutes for each subject every day, you would not need to spend hours studying the night before an exam. So, what happens if you didn’t know that vital piece of information and now you are stuck and really need to get this whole studying thing mastered? Do not fear life is not over as you now know it. You can still pull off those stellar grades, but you will have to be VERY strategic about it.

Studying is only a small portion of doing well on exams.

Yup, you read that correctly. Studying techniques are just a part of being successful when it comes to writing exams.

Some things to remember

When it comes to exam strategy there some things to remember. An exam is a predictable set of patterns. Know what type of test you are taking. Do not hang out with your friends before the exam and quiz each other. Why: If someone asks a question that you cannot answer it will erode your confidence.

First things first

Once you are in the exam room take a scrap piece of paper and jot down everything you remember about the subject. Yup, I mean everything. If it is a science or math exam include all of your formulas. If it is social studies write down dates, names, etc. and if it’s an English exam jot down definitions, character names, story sequence, etc.

Cycle the exam

When you get your exam cycle through it. DO NOT answer any questions. Just read each item and rank it either easy, medium or hard. (If you have to read three pages of text to answer two multiple choice question mark those questions as hard because you have to do a ton of work to get two points.) Once you have cycled through the exam, then you can begin answering questions. Answer all of the easy ones first, then go onto the medium once and finally the hard ones. By doing the easy ones first you gain momentum and by the time you get to the hard ones the answers to those may very well be in the easy and medium ones.

You are not being rude

Lastly, ignore everyone else in the room. If someone leaves after 30 minutes don’t panic. They may very well be out in the hall beating their head against the locker because they didn’t know anything on the exam. If you become distracted, close your eyes, give yourself three, big deep breaths in for the count of five, and out to the count of five, then continue back with your exam plan.

For more in-depth information on studying and exam writing, please check out our study skills program on our website. https://www.engagededucators.com/programs-services

or please contact us

Student Exam Writing

Student exam writing can be challenging. As an educational strategist, parents often come to me with the following: “My child does really well on assignments. They bring their assignments home, they’re doing really well, and then they take an exam and they bomb. What’s up with that?”

Parents go on to tell me that their student would study. They had family members quiz them, and they answered all the questions correctly, but when they went to write an exam, they failed or received a low grade.

Here’s the reason they bomb. Students often don’t know how to write an exam, and in our current, government structured system, when we do write an exam, it’s often for all of the marbles. So, the obvious question would be, how do you get better at writing exams? You get better at writing exams by practicing writing them.

Look, you don’t become a really good hockey player by hanging out at the tennis courts. You have to practice. The same is true for students and writing exams. So, how do you do that? It really is easier than you think. First of all, figure out what type of test or exam your student is going to take. For example, is it short answer, true or false, essay or multiple choice. Once you have that figured out you are ready to rock and roll!

You can assist your student in practicing by getting a subscription to the exam bank. (Most provinces have them. Alberta has an exam bank (alberta.exambank.com). Once you have a subscription you can then log on and pull down practice exams by grade, subject and topic area. Once you have an exam downloaded, print it out. Do not have your child do the answers on the computer. Why? Glad you asked that. Your child will likely be answering using pen and paper or pencil and paper (scantron) and if they practice on a computer screen the brain does not see it as the same thing. Once you have a clean copy printed out, you go in as a parent and answer all the questions. Don’t worry, you don’t even have to read the questions, simply mark in a,b,c, or d. Then hit submit. The exam bank program will then generate a key to the exam you just printed for your student. Now you can have a key! (Are you staying with me? Print out an entire batch of tests.) You can continue this process until your student is scoring consistently high on the test you are giving. Using this process, not only do you allow your child to practice but you also expose him/her to the verbiage often used in exam questions. (Added bonus) Remember to print a wide variety of tests in order to ensure your student has mastered the topic area.

**Just an aside, the author does not feel multiple choice exams are a good way to assess knowledge. Given that most of the exams our students encounter are mainly testing the ability to recall. You should know, recall is the lowest form of thinking. So what are they hoping to get from these type of exams?

The following article is a 5th grader’s essay … Eventhough it is written about the education system in the US, it certainly applies to the Canadian education system as well. The intro is written by Valerie Strauss.  Valerie is a journalist for the Washington Post. Click on the link to follow her.

One voice given short shrift in the loud (and unfortunately increasingly shrill) education debate is that of kids. You know, the people who actually have to take all the standardized tests that are (again, unfortunately) at the center of modern school reform.

With the blogosphere screaming with claims by adults that standardized test-based reform is improving student achievement, here is the work of a child who tells a different story. It’s important to listen.

This was written by Julia Skinner-Grant, 11, a fifth grader at Chevy Chase Elementary School in Montgomery County. Julia, a special education student in the highly gifted center, wrote this persuasive essay for a school assignment.

She’s far more persuasive than a lot of adults on the subject.

By Julia Skinner-Grant

A good education is the key that opens the door to success in life. When children learn early on and discover their passions then their world, our world, just keeps getting better. Yet, how will we get better if all we teach our students is what has already been discovered? How will our future get better if we educate kids about how to remember random facts? How will “No Child Left Behind” help America’s future?

In 2002 President George W. Bush signed the “No Child Left Behind” Act. The purpose of this law was to narrow achievement gaps between students, since many lower income students were not performing well on standardized tests and didn’t have basic reading or writing skills. So “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) is a system where testing is emphasized throughout the public school system in the United States. Now the nation’s teachers are given so much focus on testing requirements that classrooms hardly manage time for intellectual discussions, where students actually learn how to become lawyers, doctors and scientists. Why schools focused on the test is because NCLB will fire teachers if students don’t attain a certain score on the test. Principals are judged by how the students do on tests that test their ability to memorize random facts. If their students do well their school and they get more money; if their students do poorly they get fired.

I believe that NCLB must be revised to fit the ideal education system of students, teachers, parents and principals. In order to do well in the 21st Century, America must teach its children how to problem solve. That is why we need an education system that:

a) enables creativity and encourages students to think

b) creates less stress for everyone and

c) a system for the future, which gives students a voice, and tests the necessary skills to be successful in life.

Though learning and expanding your knowledge may seem like the right thing to do, expanding your ability to think and problem solve independently and understand instead of memorize word for word is one of the traits that gives people the ability to be successful in life. Yet America has created an education system (NCLB) that focuses on memorization of what has already been discovered and forgets all about creativity and innovation and the future. Take Benjamin Franklin for example. He left school at the age of ten. And he managed to go on to be a brilliant inventor, writer, businessman and politician. Since standardized testing was not around back then he had more time and freedom to use his own imagination to come up with technology for the future. He invented the lightning rod, which we still use today to protect our houses and our lives from Mother Nature’s destructive powers. Would standardized testing have provided him with the information to save lives, or would experimenting, predicting and discovering enable him to create something that we still use today?

Stress, stress, stress. Back in the 18th century life may have seemed pretty stressful. Yet, today’s society contains far more stress for everyone, including children. Stress is typically caused by anxiety due to an overload of tasks to be completed or an important upcoming event. Testing creates significant stress for students, teachers and parents. “No Child Left Behind” takes the stress of testing and assumes that the more students are prepared for testing the less anxious they will be. But what this actually does is lead students to believe that this test is far more important to their future than it actually is, since teachers, principals and parents are all busy trying to help a student for a test that will judge them. Now the student feels as if they will let all these people down if they don’t do well on the test and eventually this stress for everybody leads to the student becoming so emotional and anxious that they don’t even have the ability to function properly for the test that they have been worrying about. Eliminating high stakes testing will reduce stress for everybody: students, teachers, principals and parents. I am not opposed entirely to testing though. It is critical to record students’ growth, yet I believe it must be recorded in a different way. A way that gets everyone excited. Tests need to be more creative and they need to test the creativity that is essential for an individual to be successful in the 21st century.

Education is our life and it’s your future too. Then why not preserve it, conserve it and make it the best it can be. The one person who knows a student’s needs the best is the student. But “No Child Left Behind” was not created by a student. It was written by a bunch of politicians. NCLB requires absolutely no funding for gifted education so all students are only being taught to a basic minimum requirement. Federal funding for gifted education has gone down by a third during the first five years since NCLB was passed. The politicians who wrote NCLB should have at least consulted a few students before putting the law into effect. I believe that if written by students, NCLB would guarantee an education fit for all students above, below and at grade level and that actually taught in an exciting way for all students.

A good education is the key to success in life. If we want to give all children a chance at success we need to give them a chance to learn in meaningful ways. That means reducing stress, especially stress caused by testing that places enormous pressure on students and teachers and forces teachers to teach to tests rather than focus on student skills and needs. Learning and school should be fun and engaging, memorizing facts and filling out worksheets don’t teach students any necessary skills for success. Let students help design their education and don’t forcefully impose standardized testing. We can’t open the door for students but we can at least give them the key.