We are going to look at four tips on how you can help students to manage their anxiety or stress around assessment time, and what you can do as a teacher, to make sure that you are not contributing to the problem. 

1.Give them plenty of warning.

2.Help them plan.

3.Do regular check-ins.

4.Help them to balance their workload.

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If you are a teacher of older children, especially high school students, (it does apply to primary school perhaps to a lesser degree,) assessment time can be very stressful for students and teachers. It’s usually stressful for teachers because that’s the time when you experience an increase in disruptive, obnoxious or difficult behavior in your classroom. 

If you take the time to investigate this, you will find that very often the behavior is driven by stress or anxiety related to the assessment period. When I was a behavior teacher, I could almost predict the day, in week seven, that I would start seeing more and more students being sent to my office for misbehaviour. Week seven was assessment week and that’s when the exams were due to begin, that’s when the assignments were due and that’s when students started to stress out and act out in class. Unfortunately, if you are a teacher that doesn’t understand this, sometimes you can exacerbate or contribute to this problem.  So I’m going to look at how you can set assignments and support your students in a way that minimizes their stress.

1.Give them plenty of warning

Firstly, give them plenty of warning. It’s really important that we give students time to process the idea that an assessment is coming. Say to them, ” In two weeks we’re going to have an assessment. I’m going to spend the next two weeks talking to you about it and give you time to ask questions about it so that you know it doesn’t come as a surprise”. Start the conversation early, even if you can start at the beginning of the term and say “Hey this is the assessment. It is not due till week seven but I  want you to start thinking about it.” 

Give them time to actually start processing it and preparing for it mentally, whether it’s an exam or assignment, give them lots of warning and that will minimize last-minute stress. 

2.Help them plan

The second thing you need to do is, help them plan. Very often students, especially boys, find it very difficult to plan deadlines. There’s an old law called Parkinson’s law, which says that, “Work expands or contracts according to the deadlines that are placed on it.” So if you say to a student, “ You’ve got an assessment in week seven,” very often what they will  say is,  “Ok I don’t need to give it any attention until week seven.” That’s just the way our brains work; so if you want them to start working earlier, you need to help them plan out a schedule that is going to help them complete the tasks leading up to the assessment or exam. This will have them working the whole time rather than just at the last minute.

You do this by helping them to plan increments of work; for example, say, ” In week five, I want you to start looking at these books and collecting research information. Then in week six you can begin to write a draft.” You might say, “You need to have the introduction and the first paragraph written by the end of week six.” In this way, you help them to step it out so that they don’t wait till the last minute.

3.Do regular check-ins

The third thing you can do is this; do regular check-ins. As you help them plan, also give them regular incremental step times when they can come back to you and say, “Hey I’ve done this. Please can you check it for me?” When you check in with them, ask them how they are going with the plan? Say, “Have you done the first step of the plan?” etc.

Regular check-ins will help to keep them on track. If they are staying on track, it will minimize their stress and you will know which students need the extra support, ahead of time, rather than at the last minute.

4.Help them to balance their workload

The fourth thing that you need to do is, help them to balance their workload. Very often what will happen with assessment time is, every teacher will set an assessment at the same time. So the students don’t just have your assessment,  they have everybody else’s assessments as well as the exams to do.  That can be really overwhelming, especially for a child who doesn’t know how to map out their preparation. They would look at that load and throw their hands up and say, “I can’t do it! It’s too much!”

So in order to support them, you need to help them balance their workload and assist them to think through their week. Say, “On Monday, work on your Maths, on Tuesday, work on your English, on Wednesday, work on your Science” etc. Help them to balance their workload so that they are not leaving things to the last minute and they are not giving up because they feel overwhelmed. That way, you are actually supporting them systematically through the process. They will feel less stressed and you will minimise poor behaviour during class. 

Calmer classrooms are all about managing behavior in the classroom. One of the ways that you can manage behaviour in the classroom is, minimizing stressful situations for your students by using the four tips that I’ve suggested. 

• Give your students plenty of warning for the assessment.
• Help them to map out a plan so that they’re working incrementally. 
• Regularly check their progress and see if they need support.
• Help them to balance their workload by tackling one subject or task per day so they work more efficiently and diminish stress.  

I hope that was really helpful to minimize misbehaviour around assessment time and have calmer students.

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