Student Testing Anxiety - 6 Tips to Help

  Welcome back teacher friends, well this week we're going to talk about, oh I already know this, this is not your favorite season of the teaching year,  I still have nightmares  about testing. Right? You're in your finals exams and like for me in university in particular, I studied two different languages and I still have this nightmare where I show up and I'm like, I'm just thinking in the wrong language.

Like I'm taking a French test and all I can think of is Italian and vice versa, right? Testing anxiety is real. I mean, it's been 30 something years since I took those tests and I still stress about it. And nowadays. The anxiety poor students have to deal with as this testing season ramps up is just more than we've ever seen in the past.

It used to be that that kind of anxiety was reserved for the really high stake tests like, you know, my finals in university or like, you know, taking the SATs or whatever. But especially,  The last, I would say, decade in the classroom that I spend, I could see students suffering from testing anxiety.

Just, not even just with the annual, you know, the kind of standardized tests, the state tests that we take, but like even weekly and monthly benchmarks. So in this  episode we're doing a  Look at six tips for helping students deal with test anxiety. They are all things you can easily accomplish and will really go a long way to helping students who feel anxiety, not just in testing, but in all things.

So I can't wait to see you on the inside.  Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast, where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries, and achieving better work life balance.  If you're passionate about education, but tired of it consuming your whole life, you have found your home in the podcast universe.

I'm your host, Grace Stevens, and let's get going with today's show. 

Alright, well before we get going with the six tips I want to mention something because I likely I might forget to mention it at the end. Once I get going, I get very excited. So there's a bunch of resources that I have actually created. I created them for my own students and I ended up putting them in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

I have a very small store but the stuff that is in it is really, I'm really proud of it. It has all five star reviews and a lot of it is for social emotional learning. And there are a couple of resources in particular that we're gonna talk about that can be really helpful. If you want done for you stuff that costs less than a cup of coffee I have some  different activities there.

I'll, as we go, I'll mention, hey, you can find this in my TPT store. But Honestly, I don't remember.  It's so difficult. I actually don't remember the name of the store, but I know if you go to Teachers Pay Teachers and just put in Grace Stevens, S T E V E N S, my, my store will pop up. It was actually under my old website name, happy hyphen.

Classrooms. So either put in happy hyphen classrooms or Grace Stevens, you'll find the stuff. There are some resources that I'm gonna talk about that would be helpful. And and then hopefully as I go through them, I'll mention, Hey, and that's actually in my store. Okay. So that's it. I didn't want to just, you know, think, Hey.

She just made a podcast to sell you stuff. It doesn't matter whether you buy the stuff or not. These six tips will really help you out and help your students out. But if you want some shortcuts, if you hear like, Oh, that's a really good idea. I should do that. But you just don't have the bandwidth to go create it for yourself.

Hey, I already did it. Don't go reinvent the wheel. Anyway, here we go. Six. Tips to help reduce student anxiety, especially around testing.  Okay, so number one. Now, I have done a bunch of podcasts about this, but specifically teach self soothing techniques to students, right? How to calm themselves down, how to regulate their own nervous system.

Now, last week's podcast, I talked about how, you know, you don't want to wait till you're, you know, out of control and try and do some deep breathing. That's like taking one step off the cliff, right?  So the goal is that by the time you come to some high stake testing, like students already have some strategies in their tool belt, right?

It is part of the class. Culture, that they know how to do a little, you know, self calming exercise, some some mindfulness, right? Go back to the episode that I did with Edukong. Okay, I think that was episode 14. I will check and I will link it in the show notes. But a ton of really great resources on that site for free.

I interviewed Kelly Lefkoe and she talked all about co regulations and other stuff. But I'm sure you know some simple minus four things. You know, when I worked with really small children, even something as easy as, you know, smelling the flower. right? Take a deep breath in.  Oh, smell how good the flower smells.

And then  exhale and pretend that it is you know, the one that, that the dandelion that spreads all the seeds, right? So, oh, it smells so good. And Ooh, scatter the dandelions, right? Or even like take five breathing. We used to call it starfish breathing, where you trace your finger around your hand. You know, there are so many techniques.

So the key is though, don't wait till we're testing, right? So just, you know, make it classroom culture during the year that everybody knows how to, when they're feeling stressed or anxious, they Can take a breath. Okay, so explicitly teach that.  And then during what I always like to do was to leave a sheet on the every student's desk with a, with a, like some, a sample of things they could do.

You know, my self calming sheet and give them some ideas to remind them or project it on the wall when they were sitting there taking their tests. So if they start to freak out, they could look up and like, oh yeah, I could do this, I could do that, right? The different things that you guys have Rehearsed.

Okay, so that's number one. Like make it part of the class culture that you teach social emotional learning. You teach these self calming techniques and some mindfulness and then have that available. Remind students before you start testing, take a breath together. Everybody let's take in a few deep breaths together.

Let's calm down our nervous system, right? So that's number one. Use your self soothing techniques.  Number two. Before you get to the test, this is another thing that you can do all year long, but certainly around testing time, is working on teaching students to focus on what they can control,  right? This is the same activity that we do with adults.

It's, you know, circle of concern and circle of control. of influence. The whole idea is you get a big circle, you write down all the things you're worried about, and then you have a smaller circle inside. You talk about all the things that you can control. And the idea is as that circle of what you can control expands, the circle of things that you're concerned about gets smaller.

Right? The more you focus on what you can control, the less kind of bandwidth you have for all the other things. Okay? So, for example,  let's think about it. All the things with regarding testing that you can't control would be, you know,  How many questions are on the test or what questions are on the test or how everybody else on the test does or How crazy your parents get about your test results, right?

All those things are beyond your control and those are all the things that the kids worry about, right? Adults, too.  The things we can control is how prepared we are,  right? How much we've studied, right? How we've used our test taking strategies, right? How We've been using positive self talk, right? So again, this is a strategy that can be explicitly taught.

Let's focus on what we can control. Now, this is where if you do want to head over to my TPT store, I have a circle of Influence, circle of concern, exercises, lesson plans, handouts, the whole bit for different age groups. There is for really young children, for the mid grades, and then for high schoolers.

I have effectively done this exercise with students of all grades and and with many adults.  So ready to go, right there, your whole lesson, age appropriate depending on what you choose. Okay, but you, you don't need, you don't need my resources. You could get yourself a marker and do a small circle and a larger circle around it.

And then work with the students that way, have them do it themselves. But if you would like some done for you resources. Go over to Teachers Pay Teachers, just put in my name, Grace Stevens, and then you can see the the ones for high school I'm remembering are on Google Slides. They're not, it's not something that really high schoolers usually want to share the stuff they're worried about.

So, number one, explicitly teach self soothing.  And number two, help students through this exercise of focusing on what they can control. All right.  Now, number three  is gonna be make sure  that your classroom environment is soothing when they're taking the test. Okay. There are some things we can do to help with that.

First off, I always appreciate playing ambient music. Okay, listen, I was that kid who just couldn't focus if I could hear another kid sniffing or tapping their pencil. Like, I found that really distracting. I remember  a school I taught at, the upper grade teachers, it was a huge reward. They were all so proud of it, you know, we had a no gum, no chewing gum policy on campus as most campuses do, right?

Nothing more annoying than finding it on the floor or stuck under a desk, right? So a lot of campuses have a no chewing gum policy. But, ooh, during testing week, it was a big treat, you know, the kids could chew gum. Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? I could not deal. If I was sitting next to somebody who was chewing loudly  Or popping gum as a, as a kid, or even as a teacher, that would have driven me nuts.

So, I find that ambient music really helps. Now, especially now, kids are very, we're just not used to silence,  in general. Kids are used to constant stimulation much more than we used to be in the past. And so having some kind of ambient music helps. In fact, I would you know, I had a projector in my class and all the lovely people on YouTube who put on, you know, ambient music with some very soothing visuals.

I always had a galaxy theme. So sometimes I would project the galaxy. Sometimes you can have like. Underwater scenes with ambient music, jellyfish, whatever, just something for the kids to stare at for a minute if they're looking around the room and kind of freaking out. So ambient music, make sure that  kids have access before, right, that they can have a drink, that they can, you know, have a snack.

Nobody wants a rumbling stomach when they're trying to.  Take a test, right? Make sure that one of the things that used to bother me about the state testing is you'd have to take, you'd have to have bare walls, right? Like if you had anything up on the walls that could potentially help a child.  Let's say when I was in third and fourth grades, of course, I always had the multiplication charts up on the wall, had to take those down, right?

Any sound spelling cards or key vocabulary, you know how it is, you either have to, you have to, the bearers need, the walls need to be bare. So either you have to take chart paper and cover everything up or pull everything down. And I found that I'm kind of distracting to students, like they're used to having some kind of environmental print around.

And so one of my workarounds was to put up motivational signs and all the things that, that self talk that we want students to invest in, such as you know, I would even have up there, you know, I can't control the results, I can control my effort. You know, I am capable of remaining calm, you know, a test score is just a moment in time.

All the affirmations that we would, you know, work with students to kind of calm them down. I had on beautiful posters that I put up on the wall. Again, if you want to do that, I have them in my TPT store. And I know some of you are thinking, Oh, TPT stuff. It's all cutesy. It's just for the little kids.

You know what? No, these were ocean themed. They were actually really beautiful. And when I left, I gave them to another teacher and she said, well, I'm keeping them up all year. So, and it also comes with those little I made like little, Note cards that you could print out also with the beautiful sand and ocean kind of with motivational notes.

If you wanted to leave, if you're that teacher who wants to leave a little love note on everybody's desk when they come in to take their test, that was always me. So you can go look at that resource. Again, you don't need that as long as what you're giving some thought to.  Is how can I make the environment a little bit special, welcoming and comfortable for everybody and certainly ambient music, you know, helps with that.

Okay. All right. The next tip is to communicate with parents.  Now, we do not have,  you know, really a lot of control about what happens with parents at home. I have worked in both environments. I have worked in a school where there was very little  parent interest, involvement. You know, the teacher really need to advocate.

Everything to  get a student the resources they needed. So that was very frustrating. And then I went to the way other spectrum where  those parents were so up  in my business about kids test scores and why wasn't their child going to be valedictorian and you know, we were already like in fourth grade.

Why are we worrying about that already? Wait, like so much pressure they were putting on these students. For their test scores, which, you know, I understand there are,  you know, high stakes tests. Right? When you're in high school, when you're trying to get an honor roll, all those things, there is so much pressure for that.

But I'm talking about a second and third grader, a third grader, you know, the first time they're ever really taking in California, first time you take your state test, like, oh my goodness, get off their back. Try and remind the parents what I remind the students. Which is, you know, this is to help us know what we need to reteach, it's just a snapshot in time.

So to try and take off a little bit of that pressure,  but also to remind parents to take it. Seriously, nothing worse than, you know, you've spent 20 minutes getting everybody settled and calm and you've done your breathing and, and, you know, and then a student's half an hour late for school and they get carted off to go do their test inside the office because you can't break testing protocols.

You know, how's that child going to be successful? So at the same time, telling parents. Hey, it is important  that you give your student the best opportunity to do well, and that includes their physical needs.  So they need to have eaten breakfast, try to have had some sleep, you know, like go to bed early and also their emotional needs, not so much, you know, pressure on them for the result, but for the result. 

effort. Okay. And, you know, remind, giving just some parents, some gentle reminders of things they can do that, you know, the success on the test in the morning  is reliant a lot on based on how they spent the night before. Did they eat healthy food? Did they have limited devices? Did they go to bed at a reasonable time?

Was there some kind of movement? Did they go for a family walk or walk the dog, right? Make sure they have some water and a snack with them. Like just, to remind parents that you know, it's hard for students to arrive if they get up late and then they're all stressed by the time they get to school. So communicate with the parents.

With a lot of the testing resources that I have together on my store, there are  communication little leaflets, you know, age appropriate with tips for parents. So I always found that was very helpful. Okay, so  communicating with the grown ups is important. Okay, so number five  is really helping students have confidence before they get to the test.

Right? So, taking sample tests. We used to call them mocks, right? Ooh, we're doing our mocks, right? So, really just, you know, studying appropriate, not teaching to the test. Not, oh, it's not on the test, I'm not going to teach you that. But obviously, giving students confidence by teaching them test taking strategies, by having mock tests, by You know, just having them feel confident like I remember that when my third graders took the state tests in California, third grade was the first time they did it and we, you know, it was computerized and there was a lot of protocols around here, you got to sign in with this particular number and you got to click here and you got to click there and, you know, it didn't take.

It was, it was, it was very there was like a lot of instructions around that. There was a script that you had to say and you could only say those particular words. And so you know, let kids practice that in a safe environment before it's testing day. Nobody wants to get to testing day and realize that their Chromebook, like, had some block on it or some firewall that they couldn't get through or, you know, just all those tech pieces is an added compet you know, an added complication.

For most of us, the days of, you know, giving a high stakes test on a, you know, the little bubble form those are gone. Most of them, you know, are dependent on technology. So make sure that kids Have practiced and that they have, you know, that you have extra chargers in the room, that you have extra Chromebooks or access to an extra computer in case there's a tech issue.

Because that really is very stressful for students and for teachers. Isn't it your favorite way to spend the testing day either is trying to play tech support.  And tip six is, any way that you can, try and just take some element of stress away from the kids. I mean, I'm not really, you know, sometimes like, oh, let's have a school rally.

You know, yay, we're off for the test. It's going to be the best week of school. I mean, it isn't. Like, don't just be smoking,  blowing smoke. You know what I'm saying? Like, kids know. Is it going to be the best week of school? No. Is it something you just have to get through? Yes. Do your best. Be proud. Promote a culture of growth over grades for those students who always know.

Now I talked about this in that episode on the gap and the gain. You know, we're always, always, always, you know, tests and test scores especially the year end tests and schools getting rated and it goes on their school dashboard, there's what their test scores are and you know, it's always, All about focusing on the gap,  but students individually need to focus on the gain on their growth.

So have that culture promoting and thinking about growth more than grades. Are grades important? Absolutely. Again, especially when it comes to, you know, high school, honor roll, AP classes, all those things. But for littles, I mean, little kids, I used to. It used to hurt my heart how much third graders would stress about this state test and I would have to remind them.

I'd say, you know what, this test could be an hour, could be two hours, you take your time. I mean, obviously it's another thing, right? Allow breaks at reasonable points, but at the same time, I would have to remind kids, listen, we're taking this test this morning, you know, we'll be done after recess.  After recess, nothing about your life will have changed.

Right. You still have the same teacher. You still have the same friends, the same pets. You know, you'll live in the same house. You know, nothing about, tangibly about your life will have changed, right? So it's okay. Try your best. Do your best. But you know, it's not something that you're gonna get all wound up about.

Otherwise, you're just not going to be able to do your best if you make it such a big Deal. Okay, let's review the six tips. Okay, so number one is practice self soothing techniques. Breathing, mindfulness, this should be a year round thing.  And if you haven't done it yet, please don't wait till the moment just before you hand out the papers or give the logins.

There is still time to just choose one or two techniques and get the kids confident using them themselves. Again, I have plenty of episodes. Go look back on Mindfulness, Brain Breaks. Look at the episode with Kayleigh Lefkoe from EduCalm. A ton of free resources there. All right, so that's number one.

Number two.  Train the students to focus on what they can control. Circle of concern versus circle of control. Powerful, powerful tool to teach students at any age. Okay, and if you want some help with that, go to my TPT store. And done for your resources right there.  Tip number three, make sure on testing day, the atmosphere of the classroom, right?

Ambient music, no rushing put up some positive motivational kind of posters, whatever, so that kids aren't looking at, you know, staples in the walls of pages that have just been ripped down. Not very cool. All right, tip number four, enlist.  The help of the parents. It's hard to strike that balance between parents need to care, care enough to make sure that their child comes prepared, you know, set them up for success, but at the same time, not, you know, putting so much pressure on a child that they feel like they're just going to burst again.

With my circle of influence, circle of control. Other things I have in there, it comes with the appropriate grade level send home kind of flyer for teachers, for parents, excuse me.  Okay. Tip number five, help the students have confidence by being as prepared as possible. That is practicing logging in.

before, you know, they show up for their test, having extra chargers, having extra devices for them, having done mock tests, having taught test taking strategies, like let kids show up with some confidence that they know what to do. And then the last tip is have this kind of yes, a pep talk right?  A positivity pep talk.

Don't just rush in. Oh my gosh, we're late here. We've got to start testing like kids. It's gonna be okay. Remind them it is gonna be okay and having this classroom culture of growth over grades, of focusing on the gain, not the gaps is really gonna help with your own mindset and with your students mindset.

And I want to remind you as with everything, you know, I always say you're Energy teaches more than your lesson plans. What are you teaching these kids? What is your energy saying, right? Are you showing up like, I can't believe you have to do this. This is so ridiculous. You know, you're the teacher who walks around the room, just, you know, emanating anxiety and looking at what kids have answered.

You know, don't be that teacher who's like,  And then stand behind a kid and say you guys make sure you double check those questions. Make sure you read the question carefully. I mean, that poor kid who you just walked by is now in a tizzy, like, Oh my god, what did I do? What did I do? Right? So just be calm.

Just, yeah. If you gotta put a fake smile on your face, Put a fake smile on your face, right? I hated state testing. Did I think it was ridiculous and unfair? Yes, some days I did. And I didn't want students to know that. But I wasn't going to smoke, blow smoke up them either saying, this is going to be the best.

Here's the rally. Let's wear our t shirts. Like, just, hey, you know what guys? It was what it is. Is it the most fun way to spend the day? No. Guess what? That's life. When you have a job, some days are really awesome and some days you have to do tedious work you don't want to do. But here's my promise to you.

If you all work hard, I will make the rest of the day as fun as I can. We'll have extra resource recess, you know. I'm not sending home. Homework, you know, and that reminds me, have some kind of low key activity, you know, for the rest of the day, not massively cramming. Hopefully you have managed your own scope and sequence appropriately so that you're not still trying to teach curriculum that might be on the test tomorrow, right?

And the other thing and this is free in my TPT store, go get them even if you don't want them. For testing. What do you do with the early finishes? I always had something for them just to color. I have some very beautiful mandalas that they can color that just have positive growth mindset words on them And I have a I think it's a set of six if you go to my tpt store Like I said, just go teachers pay teachers put in grace stevens and Scroll down there is a freebie which are coloring mandalas and a lot.

I mean up thousands, thousands and thousands of those have been downloaded and teachers constantly comment, Hey, this was a really good activity. For when we were done with testing. So if nothing else, please at least go grab that. I've made the resources. I'm happy for you to have them. Okay. So may your testing season, you know, go as smoothly as possible.

I know it's just as stressful for the teachers as it is for the students. It is unfortunately a necessary evil that is not going away anytime soon. So you might as well be as prepared as possible. And I hope these tips  and I just want to tell you, please, if you have. Any value at all that you've got from my podcast, please tell a friend, tell a colleague, pay it forward.

It would mean the world to me. It is a weird thing to do to sit alone in a room with my cat and just talk into the void and hope that it lands on ears that appreciate it and that need to hear it. So  if you know a colleague who thinks. would appreciate this kind of content, please do tell them. Again, it would mean the world to me.

In the meantime, remember, create your own path, bring your own sunshine, and I will be excited to talk to you again next week.