Helping Children Prepare For Tests

Dr. Gerald Deskin, Ph.D.

Your child is upset because of an upcoming test at school. He is feeling overwhelmed, anxious and is unsure about how and what to study. What can you do as a parent to help your child? Unfortunately, the solution to this problem starts at the beginning of a child’s education. We need to help our child develop good study skills from kindergarten on. Every child should have a study period at home in which homework is completed and the child reads. With this background three factors including knowledge of the material, good organizational skills and test anxiety are already partially or wholly resolved.

Knowledge of the material, while essential to passing any test, may be accomplished as the child reviews his work on a regular basis. This includes preparation for taking the test as well as understanding what is going to be tested. This is true for a simple subject matter test such as history, or a much more complex test such as the SAT. for getting into college. Students often feel they can take any test, only to find out they were unprepared for the type of test being given, such as essay, true-false questions or multiple-choice questions. Knowledge of the material leads to knowledge of the answers to the questions being asked. Unless a child has enough time to prepare in advance there is little chance of doing well on a test. This preparation is done in several ways including review of the material, review of previous tests and learning new material that has not been learned previously.

Organizational skills also contribute to successful test taking. Your child has to be able to read questions correctly so that he can organize his answers. This skill requires that time constraints are used in the best possible manner, rather than your child being held up by some specific point and wasting time. What may be required is to go on to the next question and when finished, return to those questions not fully answered. When writing an essay this might involve organizing the essential points of a topic and the order they should be discussed. The ability to outline important points is an essential part of organizational skills.

Test anxiety can interfere with doing well on tests for some children. There is an unfortunate relationship between how anxious a child is and how various tasks are performed. While a little anxiety can be positive in motivating a child to do well, too high an anxiety level may leave a child confused and unsure about how to proceed. Learning how to relax, which is the opposite of being anxious, can help your child feel confident and most importantly to recall all that he knows about a specific question.

All of us feel anxious some of the time, but test anxiety is often overlooked as a major reason for failure on tests. Learning how to relax may take a little time, but it is a fairly simple and straightforward procedure. Learning how to control one’s breathing so that we breathe more slowly is the first step. Relaxing various parts of the body from head to toe is the second part of the procedure. Finally, clearing ones mind or at least slowing our thoughts and calming ourselves are easy procedures for children to learn. Since one cannot be tense, anxious and relaxed at the same time, relaxation tends to reduce test anxiety.

Suggestions for parents:

Start in kindergarten to set aside a study time every day for your child to do homework or to read.
Make sure your child has learned the necessary material and knows how to organize answers to questions.
Help your child learn to relax.
If any of these steps are difficult for you to teach, consult a child counselor or psychologist who is knowledgeable about education for help.