SAT or School Tests: Help Your Child Avoid Test Anxiety
By Marlene Caroselli Ed.D.
A recent article from the New York Times online edition ("Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain," by Matt Richtel, August 16, 2010) asserts the need for focus. Many children, facing a test in their immediate future, lose their focus and yield to fear and anxiety, thus diminishing their mental acuity. And, in all likelihood, their test scores as well.
The article discusses a seminal study done at the University of Michigan.It found that people learn better when stimuli are reduced. Walking in a quiet forest, for example, leads to better knowledge-acquisition than walking on a busy street, where the brain is figuratively pulled in so many different directions.
How can you take this research and apply it to your own child's ability to perform well on tests? It's easier than you may think.
As close to the actual start of the exam--we're talking minutes, ideally--put your child in the right frame of mind by focusing his or her attention. (To quote David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, "Attention is the holy grail.") Getting away from distractions, such as electronic devices, positive impacts both memory and learning.
Focus your child's mental energies on a fun-but-challenging brainteaser. Here's one from MIT that has been modified to calm pre-exam jitters.
If the word "cat" were written like this -- c a t -- you'd recognize it immediately. The same goes for the word "dog," written as d o g.
You'd be equally good at recognizing these words if they had a bracket in front of, or behind them: [c [a [t. Or, d] o] g].
But what if these two words were written like this:
[c d] [a o] [t g]. Suddenly, it's much harder to recognize them, isn't it?
Prepare pairs of equally long words and hand the list to your child so he can concentrate on using his brain power right before that test, instead of dissipating his mental energies with worry. Use vocabulary/spelling words with which he is familiar.
Here are a few appropriate for middle school:
[m s] [i c] [d h] [d o] [l o ] [e l]
Have your child write the whole word beneath each line. And, make it easy for her--use a computer-generated list, rather than your own handwriting.
Whether it's for quizzes, mid-terms, finals or SAT Tests, simple excerices can rev up your child's brain.
