Test Anxiety: What is it and what can you do about it?

This lesson works best with students who are older (5th grade and up)

I begin by telling the students that we will be talking about test anxiety and that they will complete a checklist to see how much test anxiety they have. I give them the Test Anxiety Self-Assessment and let them complete it on their own. I then tell them to count up the number of checks they have in the usually and sometimes categories and add them together to get a number. If the number is 10 or higher they have some test anxiety. The higher the number the more test anxiety they have. I make sure to tell them that this is not a good or bad thing, it just gives them more information about themselves. 

I then use the power point Test Anxiety to talk about what test anxiety is and give them some tips on dealing with it.

Don't Pop Your Top

Don’t Pop Your Top

Read Julia Cook’s book “Soda Pop Head.”

Show class a poster with the three anger rules on it:

Do not hurt yourself

Do not hurt others

Do not hurt property

Use a balloon to demonstrate how anger can keep building until it explodes. You will bring out a balloon and have the students raise their hands and tell you things that make them angry. You can either blow the balloon up until it actually pops or you can discreetly poke it with a tack or safety pin. Tell the class that this is what happens when we don’t deal with our anger in the right way. Just like the balloon, there is only so much we can take and at some point you end up exploding.

Next have the students brainstorm some ways that they can deal with their anger while following the three rules. Give them the Don’t Pop: Ways to Handle YourAnger worksheet. While they are doing this, blow up another balloon.

Ask students to tell you some of the ways they came up with to deal with anger. For each correct strategy, let some air out of the balloon. Tell students that by doing something to help themselves calm down, they will relieve a little bit of the pressure on themselves so that they don’t pop.