With winter break coming up students are buzzing around with excitement and waiting to be off of school to celebrate the holidays and New Years. Winter break also means spring is fast approaching and getting students prepared now for spring assessments can help empower them and help take away some pressure the exams create. Here are some ways to prepare for spring assessments:
1. Use engaging lessons and activities to review
Using content knowledge with real-life situations aid in transferring knowledge rather than memorizing it. Having hands-on and realistic lesson plans and activities can help students tackle solving complex problems and retain information better, being able to adapt to new questions they might see during assessments. Plenty of Douglas Stewart partners have pre-made lesson plans and hands-on activities to help teachers.
Check out some of them here: https://varconnection.dstewart.com/2024/08/14/pre-made-lesson-plans-to-help-teachers/
2. Use practice test
Practice testing has been proven to be one of the most effective learning techniques. Mixed-format practice tests proved to be the most effective, using students’ cognitive processes to answer questions and retain information. Multiple-choice practice tests emerged as the most effective single format, being less cognitively demanding and easier to focus on a simple task. The benefits of practice testing were greater when the practice test and the final test formats were identical rather than dissimilar, so finding out the format of the official assessment can help teachers pick what practice tests to use.
3. Encourage studying for a short period each day
When studying for tests, students should study in small doses, around 20-30 minutes per day for several weeks or months, instead of cramming all of the studying into one night right before. Study breaks are also helpful for focus, retention, and getting through study sessions. Give students and their parents areas of focus to review leading up to the assessments, and any studying resources to recommend.
4. Positive mindset and goal setting
Try to help students mitigate their stress around test taking with a positive mindset. Together, collaborate on some classroom mantras to post around the room. Practice deep breathing or modeling how to stimulate pressure points to help students find their center in a moment of stress. Another thing teachers can do to help relieve stress is have students create studying and testing goals. Students can have predetermined rewards to help motivate and stick to helpful habits.
Check out more ways to prepare your students for spring assessment:
What is your go-to method for preparing students for spring assessments?
Resources:
https://www.edmentum.com/articles/5-proven-ways-to-get-the-most-out-of-practice-testing/ https://bestinclasseducation.com/5-strategies-to-prepare-students-for-end-of-year-testing/
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