Tips for Exam preparation: A Principal’s Advice to Students
Posted by Jonathan Martin on 12/09/10 • Categorized as Best
Educational Practices
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Remarks to students, 12.8.10.
Exams are next week: how many of you are looking forward to
taking exams? I hope the answer is many of you, because I
believe that when a well-prepared mind engages with a well
designed test, fireworks can happen inside our minds. I had many
experiences of feeling more intellectually stimulated, engaged,
creative and innovative, when taking a well-designed exam than
during almost any other time. My mind leapt to new insights and
perceptions, made more connections and inferences, and
discovered and constructed original solutions or approaches to
vexing problems. I loved taking exams.
But you do need to be well prepared to be successful. Some
suggestions for you to be better prepared.
1. When you study, don’t just read: write! Too often we think we
are studying when we let our eyes drift over the words in our
notes, our textbooks, and our study guides. That isn’t enough;
we must write to remember and develop better understanding. My
freshman year of college I struggled with my midterms, and was
quite disappointed with the results. Come finals, I chose to do
something I had never done before: I simply rewrote, word for
word, every note I had taken during lecture– and when I went to
take my exams I was flabbergasted with how much more I recalled
and how much more confident and authoritative I was addressing
the questions. Recopy notes, or write about your notes and
texts: what are the most interesting, more original, most
surprising, most confusing, most important, most controversial
ideas or informational nuggets in the texts you are studying?
Write these out, and you will be better prepared.
2. Study in groups. When this works well, it is awesome; when it
doesn’t work well, it can be a disaster. The opportunity is
great, but effective execution is essential. When you do it
well, the result will be better understanding and retention of
key factual content and key interpretations , better
anticipation of what will be on the test, and far more breadth
of wisdom in how to answer those questions.
Here is my suggested strategy for group study: gather 3-6
students, no more, together for a couple of hours: be clear
up-front that this is serious study time. Have food available:
this is very valuable! Bagels and cream cheese (not donuts or
candy) is my recommendation. Spend thirty to fortyfive minutes
brainstorming what you think will be asked on the test: review
previous tests, study guides, textbook unit tests, and any other
materials to guide you. You might have each member of the group
individually write up 3-4 questions, and then share them with
the group for discussion and feedback as you generate the best
(and what you think are most likely) test questions you can
identify.
Then, having established the best set of potential questions you
can determine, spend 90-120 minutes answering them. You might
talk about them, one at a time, taking turns having a group
member be the note-taker, and talk as widely, deeply, and
inclusively as you can about how to answer these questions. If
you didn’t come up with good, challenging, and representative
problems in the first round, this round might fall flat.
Sometimes it works better to divvy the questions up, have each
of you individually answer them in writing, then share the
answers out loud for discussion and expansion.
The discussion benefits you two ways: as someone speaking and
sharing your suggested answer, you yourself are gaining far more
comprehension and retention of those ideas because the best way
to deeply understand and remember ideas is to explain it to
someone else. Second, by listening to others, you will get new
ideas and perspectives to bring to bear on the question you
might never have thought of, and by using this broader set of
ideas in your answer on the exam, you will perform better than
you would have alone!
3. Exercise and sleep. This is common-sense and universally
advised, but it bears repeating. Exercise in particular is so
valuable, and take the time to walk every 30-45 minutes around
the block or up some stairs. You might even try to do very light
exercise, on a treadmill or exercise bike at low rates for
instance, while you are studying.
4. Move around. When you are trying to learn, master, and
memorize ideas or facts, do so while moving from spot to spot.
At each spot, focus on learning one idea/fact/topic, and do so
while looking around and taking in your surroundings. Do this
inside or outside your house or anywhere you might be. If
possible, repeat, returning to the same location for the same
nugget. Our brains are more like those of squirrels or pigeons
than we realize; they are deeply wired to associate learnings
with location. Squirrels memorize the location for their acorns
so they can return to them months later; if we associate a
physical location with an idea, it is imprinted in our brain, so
that all we need to do is remember the location and the acorn
buried there will return to mind in all its detail and
specificity.
5. Connect smells to learning. This may seem bizarre, but as
Proust taught us with the madeleine, memory and smell are
deeply, powerfully intertwined. You might try sucking on a
particularly flavored altoid mint while you study a difficult
subject, and then, (with the permission of your teacher!), suck
on that same flavor mint while you take your exam. Medina, is
his terrific book Brain Rules, tells us that research has
demonstrated this works.
One more tip, not about studying but exam-taking. When you
encounter a question which entirely stymies you– one you think
you have no idea whatsoever how to answer– just begin writing.
Begin to fill that white space with something, anything. You
might try just rewriting the question, and then free associate
to anything at all you do remember about the topic at hand– even
if your ideas have no direct relationship to the question at
hand. What you will find, more often than not, is that ideas are
connected to other ideas; ideas follow each other like a long
train of widely varying units, and by beginning to write words
and ideas you do know, the connected ones that you have
forgotten begin to emerge in your mind and on the paper. Just
get the train of ideas moving, and what you are looking for will
come along before too long.
Readers, please share other advice you might have on best study
practices for our students as they anticipate exams.
[Cross-posted on www.21k12blog.net]
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8 Comments
Chris Wejr
December 10, 2010 • 10:12 pm
Jonathan, your post provides some great strategies for test
prep. My question to you is: do you think that taking tests is
the best way to assess our kids? Do you think that students
should be looking forward to exams? If exams were great for
getting the fireworks in our minds going, why do adults not do
this beyond school? I know you are a fan of Wagner – how does
exam-taking fit into his ideas?
I know you state that you enjoyed taking exams but I absolutely
hated them. The best thing about my Master’s Program was that I
could demonstrate my learning through presentations,
debates/discussions, papers, etc and not have to do a single
quiz or exam.
I know your post is not about whether exams are effective for
learning but it may open up a good conversation around this
topic.
I also realize that we are often forced to give exams and part
of our job is to help our students succeed within the system.
One thing I like about this site is it often challenges my
thinking. I would love to hear people’s thoughts around this.
Thanks for making me reflect!
Reply
Jonathan Martin
December 11, 2010 • 12:30 am
Hi Chris:
Love your comments. A few thoughts in response:
1. Yes, in a certain sense I was stipulating implicitly the
status quo of examinations in offering this advice. I think
education should change dramatically in many ways in the coming
years, but my students (and millions of others) still need to
take their exams next week and I might as well try to help them
as best I can in the meantime.
2. I try to be a both/and, all things in moderation kind of guy.
I am very passionate about PBL, exhibitions, published student
work, digital portfolios, and think all these tools should be a
much larger part of how we assess student learning. But I also
think, as I say above, that a well designed test can be a
valuable, intellectual, learning experience. I also think it can
be a good way, not the only good way, to assess how well kids
have learned to think about complex topics.
3. I think that we can help students look forward to exams if we
design them better. I don’t know if you have seen my students on
video speak about the CWRA test,
(http://21k12blog.net/2010/04/01/st-gregs-students-discuss-on-video-the-cwra-college-work-readiness-assessment/)
but you can hear them be very excited about the experience of
taking that test and they recommend it highly to other students.
4. I was especially conflicted, in what I wrote above, about the
“smell” discussion. I don’t want students taking tests that
reward students for their memorization skills, I want them to
take tests that prioritize thinking skills. So the advice there
for memorizing will become mostly moot when we have consistently
better tests, and I think that for the most part, better tests
are open-book, and “open-Google” tests, where students have the
skills to seek, find and use information to answer challenging,
rich questions. I wrote about this recently here on CP when I
wrote about “Open Info Access Testing.”
5. I think Tony Wagner is aligned with what I am saying here. I
think he is appalled by tests which call for regurgitation or
rote application of formulas. He has expressed great
reservations about AP testing; he has praised highly High Tech
High’s PBL approach. But he, like me, endorses the CWRA and has
praised both the PISA tests and the IB test philosophy, because
they are much better constructed tests, tests which require
students to demonstrate higher order thinking and
problem-solving.
6. I am intrigued, and a bit stumped, by your question about why
if exams are so great, why we as adults don’t do them. Many
adults do love crossword and other types of puzzles, which are a
form of “tests,” perhaps. I think there are times when we as
adults have a challenging assignment and a time limit, and have
to sit down and figure it out and get it done, and some of us
find we thrive in those moments. But those are only partial
parallels. Interesting.
Reply
Lyn Hilt
December 12, 2010 • 10:39 pm
Jonathan,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I know so many of us
are conflicted about the importance placed on standardized
testing and the undue stresses it can sometimes cause teachers
and students. I continue to try to help my teachers see the
value in using our state standards as a guide for bringing alive
a world of interesting content and learning for our students
without having them feel completely overwhelmed by the demands
of a too-packed curriculum and high-stakes tests. When state
testing time rolls around in the spring, a lot of schools hold
testing pep rallies and make a big to-do about the assessments.
We definitely do not. If we’ve been working hard to help develop
each student as a learner, the scores on the mandated tests will
reflect that.
Reading through your list, it seems as though your suggestions
could be applied to improving learning outcomes for students at
any time, not just at exam time!
I agree with Chris that the current structure of high-stakes
assessment is not the most effective way to evaluate our
students’ learning. I’d love to see my state experiment with
varied types of assessments. Our reading, math, and science
exams do ask students to craft writing responses to open-ended
problems, but for the most part, students fall victim to the
“bubbles” and are asked lower-level thinking questions.
Thanks for your thought-provoking post!
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