Teach Secondary -Issue 15.1

Keep the stress at bay Katharine Radice shares with us her advice on what schools can do to help their Y11 students navigate the crucial final year of their schooling... INTHE CLASSROOM 1. Focus on the now– the rest comes later When teaching Y11s in September, should we be highlighting what they need to think about now, while simultaneously telling them about what they should keep an eye on in six to eight months’ time? There’s a difference between teaching to the test and talking to the test – do we really have to mention exams as much as we do? The more we encourage students to think about both what’s important today and this unknown future, the more unmanageable their preparations will likely start to feel. 2. Students have less time than you think A fundamental difficulty when revising for GCSEs is the lack of time. If you were to calculate the number of revision hours available to our students, factoring in weekends and holidays, and divide that by the eight to ten subjects most students will be taking, you’ll quickly see just how limited their time really is. A big challenge for Y11s is howmany revision resources are available to them, but they don’t have any more time to sift through then than previous generations of students. This canmake devising a revision plan actually harder, since deciding what they’re not going to do has now become as important as deciding what they are going to do. That’s why it can be helpful for students to talk through their priorities with you in a way that’s realistically calibrated to howmuch time they have: ‘ Miss, I’ve got 2 hours to revise this topic, so I thought I’d do [X] – is that sensible? ’ 3. Be mindful of other subject demands Teachers need to consider, realistically, howmuch time students have to revise their subject, and when that revision will get done. If you stop and really think about howmany hours students will be able to dedicate to revising your subject over, say, the Easter break, you’ll likely find yourself shocked at just how small that number actually is. Again, remember that students have far less time to revise than we, as teachers, often realise. That can lead to gaps between what teachers believe their students can do, and the reality of what’s going to be possible for them to do. The bigger those gaps become, the higher students’ stress levels will be. 4. Use past papers strategically Past papers can make exams feel more familiar and less intimidating, and are essential for developing exam technique. That said, completing past papers is a summative task that requires students to practise using knowledge – they’re not necessarily the best way of building that knowledge. Come the day of the exam, students will need to have been working with past papers for a certain amount of time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they should be using them from the start of Y11. Introduce them too early, before students have the knowledge and skills needed to properly access the questions, and you run the risk of making the exam seemmore complicated and difficult than it actually is. WHOLE SCHOOL 1. Emphasise that stress responses are natural When we talk about exam stress in school more generally, many students can lapse into thinking that it’s possible to experience no stress at all, or dwell on the stress they’re feeling to the point that it becomes unmanageable and overwhelming. The sweet spot is for students to adopt a healthy, realistic perspective of what’s normal and natural for them to be experiencing. We should acknowledge that it’s natural to feel slightly queasy when an exam’s about to start, or to have difficulty sleeping well the night before. Accepting this can help us develop workable strategies for dealing with that stress when it presents itself. 2. Celebrate with care There’s a place for celebrating great work at a school-wide level – students’ GCSE art displays being an obvious example – but we should also remember that the purpose of exams is divide and rank students according to the perceived quality of their work. If your school only celebrates your students’ very best work, you’re establishing a specific quality marker against which everyone will feel encouraged “Students have far less time to revise thanwe,as teachers, often realise” 28 teachwire.net/secondary