How to be Exam Ready
This is a hot topic around this time of year. Final exams seem to be looming closer every day; teachers are frantically trying to get those last pieces of content covered, parents are stressed, and learners are finding impressively creative ways to avoid studying. I call it exam fever… and it’s highly contagious!
As a principal, my impression is that exam fever has become more of a reality for many families lately, in younger and younger grades, and particularly in traditional models of education which are very test and exam-oriented.
But no matter which school or curriculum you find yourself in, tests and exams are a reality for all of our learners. And we want our learners to thrive in tests and exams. So we need to know how to be exam ready. In other words: How do we prepare well for tests and exams, without catching exam fever along the way? There are three distinct spheres of responsibility: the parent, the teacher and the learner. If everyone does their part, then our children can go into exams feeling confident and equipped.
Parents: Supportive Accountability
A parent’s role can be summed up in that simple two-word phrase. Supportive accountability. Primer, a home education group, wanted to identify the number one contribution that a parent can make towards the academic success of their child. Do you want to know what it was? A safe space. Emotional, physical and intellectual security. In other words, children thrive most when they are given a space where they belong and feel safe. By the way, this principle is true for all of us - even adults. An internal survey at Google found that the number one contributor to job satisfaction was that their staff had a sense of ‘intellectual safety’.
So how do we as parents create this safe space for our children to thrive academically? I sum it up as ‘supportive accountability’. It’s a combination of care and consequence, love and boundaries.
Let’s get practical. Here are some elements to think through as a parent. In each one, listen out for the combination of support and accountability.
● Designate a space. Your child should have their own space in the house for their work. It doesn’t need to be a big space, but make it theirs. As far as possible, avoid using common spaces for studying - like the dining room table. If they are going to be in their room, keep their door ajar. Really - even for your 18 year old! They should be in charge of their space, but not isolated in it.
● Engineer the environment. Think about the physical environment. Bright, natural, ambient lighting is best. Noise levels should be regulated and not too loud.
● Provide the tools. Make sure that your child has good stationery, lots of notepads, files with dividers, a supportive chair, and so on. This also may require removing certain tools. They shouldn’t need their phone, so teach them to keep it in another space - preferably another room - during studies.
● Feed the brain. Yes, during study time you should jealously guard the role of chef in the house. Make sure that your child is eating well, and that it is healthy food. Avoid sugar.
● Check in regularly. Take time to ask supportive, open ended questions like “How are you finding your studies?”, “What are you struggling with?”, “Has your teacher shown you some helpful ways to study?” and “What can I do to help you?”. Ask them to show you what they worked on that day. Give feedback - praise them when you see positive progress or hard work.
● Keep a healthy perspective. Some of our kids feel overwhelmed by the ‘bigness’ of exams. Others just seem to not care at all. Our job as parents is to keep calling them to a balanced and healthy perspective on exams. Think about what motivates your child and speak that language, helping them to find value in hard work without being overwhelmed by it.
Teachers: Intentional Practice
It’s important for parents to know how their school approaches assessment. While these things may largely be out of the hands of a parent, the school and its teachers play a significant role in exam readiness. From the teacher’s perspective, exam preparedness is mostly about practice, practice, practice. But as with most things, the way you practice really matters.
● Practice by reverse engineering. It starts with the teachers knowing the curriculum and exam standards thoroughly, then letting that inform the teaching. This is one of the reasons that at Koa we ask all of our grade 10-12 teachers to mark matric papers at least once every 2 years.
● Practice skills as well as content. On my very first day of teacher training, my lecturer sat us down to write a full matric Maths past paper. Then he graded it and made the results public to the class. Gulp. There was a real range in marks that first day! This was repeated every week for 6 months. By the end, most were getting close to 100% every time. Everyone had gotten a little better at Maths, but a lot better at writing Maths exams. That’s because exam writing is not just about knowing a set of content, it’s also a set of skills that needs to be practiced.
● Practice like it’s a match. Quick sports analogy. I worked with Simon, a national hockey coach whose mantra was ‘Practice like it’s a match!’. His experience was that players would produce in a match whatever commitment and intensity they showed during practice all week. The same is true for exams. We ask our teachers to approach ordinary lessons at the start of the year with the same dedication and focus as the week before finals.
● Practice until it’s boring (almost!). Jason Hutchison, our Head of Academics for grades 10-12, says that a good teacher prepares their students so well for exams, that sitting down to write a paper in their subject is so familiar by the time they reach grade 12 that it’s almost boring. That’s not to say that we want our learners to be bored! It’s just a striking way of saying that exam sessions should be comfortable and familiar because they have been practiced regularly.
Learners: Early Consistency
Every learner is unique, so study approaches vary from one person to another. But what is true for everyone is that (1) starting early and (2) being consistent wins the day. Again, Jason has a great quote for this. He likes to remind our learners that “It’s easier to keep clean than make clean”. In other words, being proactive towards your studies from the start makes it a lot easier to stay on top of things.
● Start early. Working towards exams is a bit like saving for retirement. The best time to start is today! Working smart from day 1 means that you are more likely to stay ahead of tasks and not get overwhelmed by the volume of content to cover leading into exam season. It also means that you have time to explore different study techniques. And there are lots of ideas out there! This gives learners a chance to figure out what works best for them while the stakes are still low.
● Be consistent. Stephen Dubner uses the phrase “in praise of incrementalism”. Many small efforts over a long period of time usually yields more than a massive effort all at once. Consistency also means that you are more likely to maintain a balance in other areas of your life too. For example, staying physically active. Exercise is great for the brain - both cognitively as well as for general mental health. Consistency over time develops strong habits which are not hard to sustain in exam seasons.
Whatever your role - you have a part to play in exam preparedness. Parents, exercise your supportive accountability in creating a space of physical, intellectual, and emotional security. Teachers, remember that it’s all about intentional practice and we need to be strategic in our pedagogy. And learners, you will win the day with early consistency by starting to build healthy work habits today, however far away from exams you find yourself.
If you are reading this the day before the exams and think that it is too late for you to start now, just remember that being ‘exam ready’ is actually a set of principles which can be applied to just about any area of your life, no matter your age. So start today!
