Click the above link to view Word documents for all the handouts for this chapter.
Student Learning Outcome
Students will practice strategies for test preparation, taking tests, and coping with text anxiety.
Summarize Your Test Taking Skills
For the print edition, use the Test Taking Checklist and Analyze Test Taking Skills to assess test taking skills and analyze strengths and weaknesses. These exercises challenge students to make some plans for improvement in the future. These exercises are integrated into the online edition.
Math Success Checklist
This Math Success Checklist helps students to think about the steps needed to study for math and be successful on math tests.
Practice with Essay Exams
To help students improve essays, use the exercise, Practice with Short Essays. Begin by discussing how to write an essay exam. Stress the idea that the first sentence is a direct answer to the question and rephrases part of the question. As a warm-up, summarize test taking techniques, including being intellectually, physically and emotionally prepared for exams and then ask students to write an essay on this question, “How can you assure your success when preparing for exams?”
After giving the students a few minutes to write, ask for volunteers to share their topic sentences. Emphasize that it needs to be a direct answer and must rephrase part of the question. A good topic sentence would be: To assure your success on exams, it is important to prepare intellectually, physically and emotionally. Students can suggest other good topic sentences. Then ask students to read sentences that explain how to be intellectually, physically and emotionally prepared for the exam. At the end of this exercise, students can rate their own essay. This exercise summarizes test preparation as well as demonstrates how to write a short essay. At the end, I discuss the importance of writing neatly and using good grammar and spelling. I also discuss what an instructor looks for when grading essays. The Power Point presentation for this chapter leads the instructor through this exercise.
Guess Test
After discussing how to answer test questions and how to guess if you do not know the correct answer, give the students the Guess Test. Students can also do this test with a partner or in a small group. Do this as a fun game without getting too serious about it. Since this is an exercise in applying common sense and guessing, the answers can be ambiguous. Resist the temptation to argue the answers.
Group Activity: Write Some Test Questions
Explain the process for writing test questions. Break students into groups. Assign each group to write 2 multiple choice, 2 True-False and 2 essay questions on a chapter in the book. Edit and revise these questions and include some on the next test for the class.
Occupational Research Exam
After explaining the process for writing test questions, assign students to write a test. Here is an assignment that combines test taking skills with researching a career.
Occupational Research Exam (Contributed by Nita Brannon Ricketts, Lonestar College-Cyfair)
A Kinesthetic Test Review
Have all students in the class stand up. Looking through the material to be covered on the test, ask questions on the main ideas. When a student volunteers to answer the question, he or she can sit down. Continue until all students are seated.
Test Anxiety
The Test Anxiety Inventory developed by Charles Spielberger is one of the most widely used instruments to help student understand test anxiety. It examines the four main sources of test anxiety:
· Concerns about how others will view you if you do poorly
· Concerns about your own self-image
· Concerns about your future security
· Concerns about not being prepared for a test
It also examines the three main expressions of Test Anxiety:
· Bodily reactions
· Thought disruptions
· General test-taking anxiety
The Instructor Manual also includes an Overcoming Text Anxiety handout from St. Charles Community College which has additional suggestions for overcoming test anxiety including positive thinking, controlled breathing, dealing with the fear response, muscle relaxing, rehearsing the test, and other practical suggestions.
An additional handout, Test Anxiety Feelings, helps students explore feelings that lead to text anxiety.
Exaggerate Your Fear
Exaggerations provide a humorous way to look at irrational beliefs and to relieve the stress related to testing. Divide students into groups and have them come up with the most outrageous and worst thing that would happen if they failed a test. At the end of the discussion, have a reporter in the group share the most creative idea. Award a prize for the most creative and outrageous idea. Follow this discussion with some ways to deal with text anxiety.
Dealing with Anxiety about Math or Science
Divide the class into small groups to discuss what makes them nervous or anxious about math or science. What do they find intimidating about these subjects? Have a group recorder make a list of the items that cause anxiety. The group should also share some ideas for dealing with these anxieties. Move from group to group sharing one challenge and a solution until there are no new ideas. Have the class suggest additional solutions to the challenges presented.
How Well Do You Follow Directions
This is a fun activity to do as an introductory exercise or it can be used after the test is returned to the class to emphasize the point of reading the directions carefully. Two handouts are available for this exercise,How Well Do You Follow Directions 1 and How Well Do You Follow Directions 2. The second handout has math problems.
Mid-Semester Feedback
At this point you are probably in the middle of the semester. Get feedback on student progress by asking these two questions:
§ What are the most helpful things you have learned so far?
§ What are you still hoping to learn?
For Online Classes:
Online Discussion Question
Here is a link to a Word document with all my online discussion questions: Online Discussion Questions
Please read the chapter on test taking before answering one of these discussion questions. Read other students' posts and reply to at least two of them.
- Students often say, “I am not a good test taker.” What ideas in this chapter would be helpful to this student?
- What are some suggestions for dealing with text anxiety?
- How do you study for a math test?
- What is the ideal way to review for a test?
- What are some disadvantages of cramming for a test and how can you avoid cramming?