Racing heart beat. Nausea. Sweating. Trouble sleeping. Stomach aches. These can all be symptoms associated with exam anxiety‎. As your child moves through school, she will undoubtedly experience increasingly long, complex, and stress-inducing exams. Help her beat this exam stress with the ideas detailed below.

Create a GRAND plan
The amount of information your child needs to learn for an exam can feel downright overwhelming. There are dates to memorize, vocabulary terms to learn, notes to process, books to read – the list goes on. To help him feel less overwhelmed and more in control, encourage him to come up with an organized “grand plan” for tackling his exams. He should start by creating a diagram on a large sheet of paper, with a bubble at the top of the page containing the subject and date of the exam (i.e. English, March 1st; Math, March 3rd, etc.). Underneath each bubble, have him list the topics he needs to learn for each exam. Then, as he studies and learns each topic, ‎he should cross it off the list. This “crossing off” action will give him a feeling of accomplishment and a sense of mastery – building motivation and confidence and reducing exam-related stress.

Break studying into steps
Rather than trying to learn all material for an exam in one night or studying at random times, encourage your child to break down her studying into organized steps and put each step into her assignment book. For instance, if she has a history exam to study for covering five chapters, she may want to map out a six day plan ‎that involves studying one chapter per day for five days and a final (sixth) day for reviewing all five chapters. Then she should detail each day’s plan in her assignment book. For instance, on Monday she might study chapter one by reviewing the chapter material, creating flash cards on important terms, self-testing herself on the flash cards, and then perhaps answering the study guide or end-of-chapter questions. She should follow this same procedure for days two, three, for and five, and end by reviewing all of the information on the final (sixth) day.

Block distractions
Help your child come up with a plan for avoiding all distractions that may divert him from his study plan. He should turn off all phones, tablets, and noise making devises that he doesn’t need for studying. If he does need use his tablet or computer for his work, he can try using an app like Cold Turkey which blocks social media websites for a designated time period, so that he can focus solely on studying. Not only can checking social media be distracting, but it can lead to increased stress if his friends, say, post comments about how much they’ve already studied or how well prepared they feel for an exam, when your child feels far from ready.

Take breaks!
Help your child prevent information overload by ensuring that she doesn’t study for hours straight. Instead, she should build in regular pre-planned breaks. For instance, she may try a strategy like STUDY-REFLECT-BREAK, where she studies for perhaps forty minutes, reflects on what she learned for ten minutes, and then takes a ten minute break. She might even build in small rewards for herself during her breaks, like ‎a cup of hot chocolate, a quick phone check, or a short walk outside. If she effectively completes her “grand plan” (like the six day study plan detailed above) she may plan a “larger” reward for herself, like a trip to the movies, a manicure, or dinner at a special restaurant.

Try relaxation exercises
If your child continues to display ongoing stress, he may benefit from relaxation exercises. For instance, he can try laying flat on his bed or sitting comfortably on a chair and closing his eyes. Encourage him to relax his body parts, one at a time, while breathing deeply. He may start with his feet, then move to his legs, arms, torso, and so on, visualizing each body part fully relaxed and taking long, slow breaths. This type of relaxation exercise can help him feel calm, in control, and free of stress.

As your child moves through school, she will encounter an increasing number of complex, stress-inducing exams. Encourage her to try these strategies to help her tackle each exam with confidence, control, and success.

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A tutoring expert explains the best tips to help your child ace their next test.

Your child may have cruised through the early years of elementary school. Tests and quizzes were rare, homework was a a breeze, ‎and projects involved simply cutting out images from magazines. Yet as students move through school, the testing demands increase rapidly. With these rising demands often comes stress, anxiety, and that how-am-I-ever-going-to-get-through-this feeling. Help your child build confidence and ace exams with the ideas detailed below.

Create a ‘big picture’ plan

Your child may feel overwhelmed by the quantity of material she needs to learn for a test. With terms to memorize, notes to process, and articles to read, the task of studying can seem downright insurmountable. To combat this feeling, help your child come up with a ‘big picture’ plan, with each topic she needs to learn for an exam detailed on a single sheet of paper. She can start by drawing a large bubble in the center of a page and writing the class name and date of the exam inside the bubble. Then, surrounding the center bubble, she can branch out with a series of smaller bubbles, each containing a topic she needs to learn for the test. Once she has effectively learned a given topic, she should cross out that bubble. The more bubbles she crosses out, the more accomplished she will feel, and the closer she will be to learning all of the material for the exam.

Break down studying into steps

Many of us know students who feel they can squeeze all of their studying into the night before the exam. Yet that “strategy” rarely works, especially as the quantity of material to learn increases.‎ Instead of this no-win plan, help your child learn to break his studying into steps, then put each step in his assignment book. For instance, if he has a science test to study for that covers five text book chapters, have him create a five day plan that includes studying one chapter per day (reading the chapter, taking notes, and perhaps creating flash cards on the material), and designate the fifth day as a review day to review all of the material from each chapter. Creating an organized, daily plan can help him feel fully prepared come test day.

Integrate memory strategies

Your child may feel overwhelmed by the quantity of vocabulary terms, names, dates, and facts she needs to memorize. Encourage her to use memory tactics to learn and retain this information. For instance, she can learn the acronym PEMDAS (Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally) to remember the steps involved in solving math equations; the letters of the acronym stand for parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, attraction. You can also try encouraging her to draw visual diagrams to visualize and remember information (like a diagram of a heart with its individual parts) or retell material aloud to tap into the auditory modality. Additionally, try having her teach the material to someone else (even a parent) for another layer of memory and understanding.

Integrate technology

Students can now choose from a plethora of online resources to help them study. ‎Quizlet, for instance, is an online option that helps students create virtual flash cards, then test themselves and play games using the material. They can also create study guides using Power Point, where they create a virtual presentation on material they need to learn for a test. This interactive tool taps into the kinesthetic learning modality and can help engage students in the process of studying. Students can even have the computer read the material aloud to them as they listen and (hopefully) retain the information.

Limit distractions

Almost all students—not just those who have ADHD—can have difficulty at times staying focused and on-task. Let’s face it—distractions are everywhere. Many students have not just computers, but often also tablets, phones, video games, and access social media and chatting apps. Let’s also not forget “old fashioned” distractions, like hunger, boredom, and sounds of nature. Help your child learn to anticipate these distractions and come up with solutions for each possible one.‎ She can create a list on a sheet of paper before she begins studying with two columns—distractions and solutions. On this sheet, have her list each potential distraction in the distractions column and a corresponding solution in the solutions column. For instance, if her phone is a potential distraction, a solution might be setting it to silent mode or turning it off entirely. If she thinks she may become hungry when studying, she might want to eat a small snack before she begins. The more she anticipates and solves these potential distractions, the more on-task she will remain.

As students progress through school, they will inevitably encounter increasingly complex tests. Encourage your child to try these strategies to effectively prepare for exams and ultimately achieve academic success.

The post 5 Strategies To Help Your Child Study For Tests appeared first on EBL Coaching.

As final exams approach, help the kids manage stress with these tricks from a local education expert: The night before an exam, many students feel “sick”–their head is aching, their stomach hurts, their back is sore. Others feel angry, or possibly even depressed. Some are irritable and others lose focus. While these symptoms might seem like ones that need medical attention, they may just be implications of test anxiety–especially if a big exam is looming. Try some of the strategies below to reduce your child’s anxiety and help her feel relaxed, prepared, and positive come test day.

‎1) Deep breathing exercises: When we feel anxious, our breathing often moves from deep abdominal breathing to shallow chest breathing. Help your child relax and breathe deeply to reduce anxiety before an exam with the following exercise:

Have your child lay down or sit in a comfortable spot with his eyes closed. Tell him to focus on his breathing, and rest his hands on his stomach to feel his breath move up and down. Have your child count backwards from 10 (or another number of your choosing) in the following manner: he inhales deeply while saying the number “ten.” He then exhales while saying out loud “relax.” Then he inhales again deeply and says “nine,” and exhales while saying “relax.” He continues to follow this pattern until he reaches zero. As he performs this exercise, his breathing should move from shallow chest breathing to deeper abdominal breathing, helping him to relax and reduce his anxiety before an exam.

2) Journaling:  Encourage your child write in a journal about her test worries. On the morning of the exam, have her sit in a quiet room free of distractions and write about her worries and concerns for 10 minutes. She can even decorate her journal with colors or stickers to make it feel comforting and familiar. A University of Chicago Study found that this type of journaling can help students reduce their anxiety and improve their overall performance on exams.

3) Memory strategies: Remind your child to use memory strategies when preparing for exams, including acronyms, checklists, and other mnemonics. For example, he can also use an acronym such as PEMDAS (Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally) to remember the sequence in solving math equations: Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction. Likewise, when learning the planets, your child can create a silly sentence such as “My very eager mom jumped straight up near Paris!” to represent Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. As soon as he is given his test, he should write down the acronyms‎ and/or other mnemonics that he memorized.

4) Rewards: Give your child a reward to look forward to once the exam is over, whether it’s a movie, dinner out at her favorite restaurant, an ice cream date, or a similar treat. Providing your child with something exciting to look forward to can help her stay calm and positive.

5) During the exam, encourage your child to use test-taking strategies. For instance, she should answer the easiest questions first and determine an allotted amount of time to spend on each question. For multiple choice questions, she should read the question in its entirety before looking at the answer choices, try to answer the question in her mind before looking at the choices, and cross out answers she knows are incorrect. For essay exams, she should map out a schedule, carefully look at the directive words when reading the question, and create an outline before beginning to write.

Taking tests–whether standardized or in-class–can be daunting for many students. By teaching your child strategies and encouraging him to use these strategies on a regular basis, he will learn to relax, stay confident, and improve his overall performance on exams.

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The night before an exam can bring immense anxiety to children. They might complain of a stomach ache, head ache, back ache, or just about any other body pain. They may feel tired, angry, or irritable. In reality, they could just be experiencing test taking anxiety. Try the strategies below to help ease this anxiety and help your child feel comfortable and confident come test day.

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The process of applying to independent schools often creates a whirlwind of emotions for prospective students.  Will I like my new school environment?  Will I meet new friends?  Will I be able to manage my new homework and test demands?  And, most importantly, Will I even get in?

Before applying to an independent school, students entering grades 5 through 12 must take the Independent School Entrance Exam (ISEE).  They need to earn a stellar score on this three-hour SAT-like aptitude test in order to compete with their fellow applicants and earn a slot in one of the ultra-competitive New York City independent schools.

With all the hype centered on this anxiety-ridden entrance exam, is there some way for students to prepare adequately for the test?  The answer isyes.  The ISEE is actually structured in a format that resembles the new SAT test.  It mixes verbal and math questions in multiple choice and quantity comparison formats and ends with a thirty-minute expository writing sample.  Students should take note: the essay portion of the ISEE is actually not graded!  This writing section is included on the exam so that schools can gain a sense of how students present arguments and express themselves on paper.  With this in mind, although the writing portion is not graded, itâ€s still a good idea for students to learn some strategies for how best to build their written expression skills.  In fact, learning strategies for all sections of the test is a sure-fire way to improve oneâ€s overall score.  Practice with these strategies builds automaticity, comfort, and confidence – all keys to exam-day success!

The Test Overview

There are actually three different ISEE tests, depending on the studentâ€s grade level:  the Lower Level (for students entering grades 5 and 6), the Middle Level (for students entering grades 7 and 8), and the Upper Level (for students entering grades 9-12).  The questions, of course, vary in complexity depending on the level of the test.  Each exam is composed of the following sections:  Math I, Verbal (containing synonyms and sentence completions but not analogies!), Reading, Math II, and the essay.  It is important for students to note that there is no penalty for incorrect answers, so unlike the SAT, there is no harm in guessing!

Strategies for the Verbal Section

The Verbal section of the ISEE contains 40 total questions, including sentence completions and synonyms.  For the Lower Level, students are given 40 minutes to complete the questions and for the Middle and Upper Levels, they are given 20 minutes to complete the same number of questions.

Sentence Completions

Within the 40-question Verbal section, 20 of the questions are sentence completions.  The sentence completions are arguably the easiest types of questions on the exam, but they can certainly be confusing without the right strategies.  For these questions, students must select the best word (or words) from the multiple choice selections to fill in the blank (or blanks) and complete the sentence.  Building a strong vocabulary base is of course key for best answering the sentence completion questions, but beyond that, students should use the following practice-makes-perfect strategy:   predicting and plugging.  For starters, the student should read the question without looking at the answer choices.  He should then fill in the blank with a word in this head– anyword, not necessarily a complex vocabulary word – which would make the sentence complete.  For example:

On the day of his grandfatherâ€s funeral, James had a _______ look on his face.

1. Happy
2. Gloomy
3. Irate
4. Ugly

Before even looking at the answer choices, the student should try to complete the sentence with his own word selection.  For instance, he might choose the word sad (before looking at the answer choices) so that the sentence reads:  On the day of this grandfatherâ€s funeral, James had a sad look on his face.

Next is the plugging step.  Once the student has selected what he feels would be a good fill-in-the blank word (or words), he should look at the multiple choice selections and try to find an answer that best resembles his own.  In the case of this example, gloomy is a synonym for sad, so the answer would be (B).

Synonyms

The other 20 questions on the Verbal section are synonyms.  Synonyms are two words that bear the same meaning, like car and automobile, seat and chair, or old and ancient.  Again, for this section, building a strong vocabulary (with lots of reading and learning the prefixes, suffixes, and roots of words), is critical.  However, a great tool for solving synonyms questions is the define and select technique.

Basically, when a stem word (the word in capital letters at the top of the question) is given, the student should come up with his own definition of the word (the define step).  Then he should read each of the multiple choice selections and decide which word best fits his definition.  For example:

GENUINE:

1. fake
2. similar
3. real
4. common

After reading the word GENUINE, the student should first define the word.  Real or authentic should immediately come to mind as possible definitions.  Next, he should select the choice that best fits his definition.  In this case, real happens to be one of the choices, so (C) would be the correct answer.

Strategies for the Critical Reading Section

The critical reading section contains about seven or eight passages (articles, stories, and poems) with multiple choices questions that follow.  Some of these questions can be tricky, and often ask students to identify the topic and main idea of the selection, find facts and figures, and make inferences.   A great tool for this section is the read, summarize, and predict strategy.  It works as follows:

The student should read the passage first, before looking at the questions.  He should try to read at the right pace – not too fast or too slow (the read step).  Practice will help him figure out the right pace.  After reading, he should ask himself what he feels the topic and main idea of the passage are, then create a one-to-two line summary in his mind of what he read (thesummarize step).  Finally, as he answers each question, he should always read the question first, predict what he thinks the best answer would be, and then look at the choices to find the selection that best matches his prediction (the predict strategy).

Strategies for the Essay Section

As mentioned earlier, the essay section is not graded but it is an important way for schools to gain a feel for how students express themselves on paper.  In 30 minutes, students must read the essay prompt (for example:  Living in the country is better than living in the city), think about their ideas, and organize their thoughts on no more than two pages of paper.  Many students lose valuable sleep just thinking about the essay-writing process.  The following tips are sure to help:

The three most important steps involved in the essay writing process are as follows:  brainstorm, write (in an organized fashion),and self-check.  First, brainstorm.  Students should create either an outline or a visual web diagram containing all information that they wish to include in their essay.  They should write out their thesis statement (whether they agree or disagree with the prompt and two or three reasons why) and also list those reasons with specific examples and facts as back-up.  Next, they should write the essay in a structured, organized, and well-thought-out manner.  Finally, they should self-check their work using the acronym COPS, which stands for Capitalization, Organization, Punctuation, and Spelling.  The acronym should be aligned vertically on the page underneath the essay with a single check-box next to each letter.  Students should self-check for eachelement on the list and place a check in the appropriate box after self-checking that aspect of the essay.

Strategies for the Math Section

The math portion of the exam contains two sections:  Math I, which has 35 questions and allots 35 minutes, and Math II, which contains 35 questions and allots 40 minutes.  The best advice for scoring well on the math section is to learn and re-learn (and practice!) all topics that may be covered on the test.  To answer the questions most efficiently, students must have enough practice with each type of question and the way it may be presented to feel fully comfortable and at-ease with the different types of questions that may be presented.

Remember that if your child is feeling at all nervous about this exam, he or she is certainly not alone!  The ISEE elicits a nerve-wrecking experience for many students.  Yet learning and implementing these tools well before the test date is a promising way to create a successful outcome.  You can also purchase ISEE study guides at local book stores.  One-on-one and small group test preparation is another option for students who need some guidance along the way.  Remember that with enough practice and the right tools, your child is well on his way to independent school admissions success!

Emily Levy is the founder of EBL Coaching, which offers one-on-one and small group academic instruction.  Read more about EBL Coachingâ€s programs at www.eblcoaching.com.

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