Test Anxiety Tips for Students
Finals and PAT season is coming up and your middle schoolers and high schoolers may start to be feeling the stress. Test anxiety is a common experience for school-aged kids, but there are several effective strategies to help them manage it.
Strategies for the weeks and days leading up to the test or exam:
Ensure that your child is spending time to effectively prepare for the exam. This may include learning helpful and effective study strategies. Often, the best way to ensure that material is learned is to use elaborative encoding methods that form more connections among the information being memorized. For example, mnemonic devices like using acronyms (e.g., HOMES for the Great Lakes), are powerful tools for memory (see this article for more specific strategies). Effective study strategies help your child make the most of their study time and build confidence with the material, leading to greater confidence and less anxiety going into the exam.
Additionally, sufficient sleep helps with effective memory encoding and recall, and should be prioritized leading up to an exam. Appropriate nutrition to fuel the brain and body is also needed. Caffeine can also make anxiety worse, and so it can actually be more harmful than helpful on the day of the exam for those who may feel anxious.
Strategies for right before and during the exam:
Deep breathing: Taking several deep breaths that start in the diaphragm can help calm the body physically. Belly breathing is a good way to describe this to younger kids. Remember, it’s essential that you are exhaling for longer than you’re inhaling. There are many different ways to use breathing for relaxation - encourage your child to try different methods and find what works for them!
Grounding exercise: Often, when we are feeling anxious, we worry about things that have already happened or things that are going to happen, and we are not grounded in the present. Grounding exercises help bring your focus back to the here-and-now, which can provide a good distraction from worry thoughts while simultaneously calming your body. One of the most basic grounding exercises is a 5-senses grounding. Essentially, you say or think of the following: 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel (touch), 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste.
Positive self-talk: Worry thoughts can spiral and slip into catastrophic thinking patterns. Focusing on what you do know may be an important tool while completing an exam. However, if these worry thoughts are persistent and problematic, additional cognitive behavioral therapy work may be needed.
Remember to pace yourself and to not spend too long on one question. Put a star beside questions you’re unsure about and come back to them afterward so that you don’t run out of time for the other questions.
Focusing on yourself and not on others, especially if others in the class are finishing the test quickly. If this is a persistent source of distress, it may be beneficial to inquire about accommodations for testing in a separate space to minimize these sorts of distractions and stressors.
It’s important to keep in mind that these will be helpful tools for most students. However, additional support may be required for high levels of anxiety, which may include individual psychological treatment from a trained professional and perhaps implementation of an IPP (e.g., to allow for testing in a separate space).
If you and your child could benefit from more focus on managing test anxiety, talk with your therapist about your options.
