Guest post by Jessica Robinson

Exam stress is overwhelming for most students. It so burdens their mind that stress-induced physical, emotional, and mental troubles begin to manifest. Frequent headaches, upset stomach, irritability, and a confused mental state are some examples. As a result, their exam preparation gets severely impacted.

Further, as their exam preparation gets impacted, their exam stress levels rise even more, and enhanced stress-induced troubles too follow.

This is how the vicious circle of exam stress takes a toll on your students.

Here we’ll discuss seven tips on how you can help your students beat exam stress and prepare well for exams.

1. Enlighten students about eradicating stress with action:

Much of the exam stress breeds from inaction, which is the lack of preparation. So, it is important for you to enlighten your students about eradicating stress with action. You can do so in the following way:

• Ask your students what will they do if weight gain stresses them out?
• Most of them will come up with solutions like running, exercising, diet control, etc.
• As they come up with these solutions, you should make them understand that all the presented solutions are actually actions. This way, you can make them learn that only actions can bring relief from stress.
• Next, you should let them know that on a similar note, they can get exam stress relief with the right action i.e. effective preparation.
• This way, you can stimulate your students to counter exam stress with effective preparation.

2. Assist students with exam preparation in the class itself:

This is an important thing to do for helping your students cope with exam stress. It involves creating an effective classroom preparation strategy for them. You can create an effective classroom preparation strategy by dividing the syllabus into different segments- high scoring topics, average, and low scoring topics. After creating these segments, you should start making your students prepare different topics together in groups beginning with the high scoring ones. This way, you can reduce your students’ burden of exam preparation and thus, help them beat exam stress.

3. Help students create a preparation plan:

It is often that students either don’t create a preparation plan or they don’t create an effective one. As a result, their exam preparation doesn’t go well and they become stressed. You can prevent this from happening by helping your students create an effective preparation plan. Given below are some key points for creating an effective preparation plan:

• Categorize the different topics as hard, average and easy
• Allocate an amalgam of some hard, average and easy topics to study every day
• Do not forget to embed time for revision daily at the end of the day
• Add regular study breaks in the preparation plan. Ideally, it is best to take a five- minute break after 25 minutes of studying. But, students can customize the length of the study period, according to them.
• The preparation plan should be so created that the last day before the exam gets devoted to revision only.

4. Take students out for playtime:

Playtime is vital for your students’ growth and well-being. But, as your students’ march is closer to their examinations, the vitality of playtime increases even more. This is because playtime helps your students cope with exam stress. As your students’ play, their body gets flooded with happy hormones such as Serotonin, Dopamine, and Oxytocin. All these hormones are effective in inducing stress relief. Thus, it is important for you to take your students out for playtime.

5. Give students the opportunity to talk themselves out:

Students often believe that exam stress is a normal thing. So, they do not communicate about it. This leads to the piling up of exam related worries which elevate their exam stress levels to an alarming extent. In order to prevent this from happening it is vital for you to initiate conversations about exam stress in class. By doing so, you give your students the opportunity to talk themselves out with you.

Further, if you feel that your students are hesitant to share their worries, you can stimulate them by sharing your own experiences with exam stress. You can tell them how stressed you felt about exams as a student and how you managed it.

6. Introduce students with the magic of mindfulness:

Mindfulness works magically in relieving exam stress. This is because it teaches the students to focus all their attention in the present moment without thinking about the past and the future. As a result, the students don’t think about their past failures and future exam results. Rather, they focus their attention on preparing effectively in the present. This way, the mindfulness technique works wonders in eradicating exam stress. So, you should try introducing your students with the concept of mindfulness. Further, mindfulness involves performing every action with complete consciousness.

For instance, if you are writing on the board, then you should do so consciously by focusing your attention on the texture of the chalk, the way the surface of the board feels on your hand, and the motion of your fingers.

7. Teach students how to meditate:

Meditation is an effective technique for stress relief. So, you should try teaching your students how to meditate. For this, you’ll have to first learn to meditate yourself. There are plenty of guided meditation videos available on YouTube. You can watch any of them learn the art of meditation.

Once you learn how to meditate, you can organize group meditation sessions in your class and lead your students on the way to exam stress relief.

To conclude, exam stress makes your students suffer and also obstructs effective preparation. This makes it vital for you to help them cope with it. You can do so effectively, by following the seven tips mentioned above.

Jessica Robinson is a woman of words, who brings with her an experience of a decade. She is an educational writer and has even penned down many motivational blogs for various websites. She spills the magic of her thoughts through her blog ‘The Speaking Polymath’. In this blog, she makes the reader experience her management proficiency along with her skill to resolve matters of global importance.