Let’s face it, for many teachers this time of year can be a nightmare of anxiety and stress due to all of the standardized testing that takes place in the spring. Whether the tests your students have to take are low stakes or high stakes; whether they are state tests or national tests; and whether or not you yourself have some personal stake in the outcome (maybe the scores are tied to promotions or raises, for example), you always want your students to do well.
I’m going to do some assuming here (and yes, I know the old saying about “those who assume”). I’m going to assume that you have done what you can prior to testing day to prepare your students to do well. This includes teaching your curriculum well, making sure your curriculum is in alignment with the test, giving students some advance guidance about the structure of the test and of individual test items, and including similar items on your own classroom tests to give your students some familiarity with how to answer them.
OK. Let’s say that you’ve done all of that (good for you!). Now it’s the day of the test. Is there anything else you can do this late in the ballgame to make sure your students do a good job? Well, if you look to cognitive science for the answer, you will see that yes, indeed, there are actually a number of things you can do to help maximize your students’ performance. Today I will give you seven great testing day “hacks” that you can incorporate with very little effort or expense. Sound good? Sure! Who doesn’t like something that’s cheap, easy, and effective?
1. Episodic/Contextual Memory: Why “Where” Is So Important
The first issue to consider is where to administer the test. I understand that, if you are a classroom teacher, you may not have much input on this question. But if your administrator(s) want to schedule the testing, for convenience sake, in a place other than your classroom (such as an auditorium or cafeteria), you need to speak up and see if your students can be tested in your own classroom. Why? It has to do with episodic (contextual) memory.
You see, when we learn facts The Money Matrix Reviews and ideas (semantic memory), we also process other details about our surroundings (episodic memory) along with that information, and it all becomes part of that same memory trace. And when it comes time to retrieve the facts and ideas, having “cues” around us in our surroundings can help us with that retrieval.
For example, a student might be stuck trying to retrieve a piece of information on the test. If he or she is in the same location where the original learning took place, some little The Money Matrix detail about the surroundings (seeing the same poster on the wall, sitting in the same location in the room where the original learning took place, recalling something that happened in the classroom on the day of the initial learning, etc.) can serve as a stimulus to help access the semantic memory of the needed information. For this reason, studies have consistently shown that students score better when tested in the same location where the initial learning took place (Schacter, 1996).