Revision matters, of course, it does. But if children don’t have the exam time management skills to showcase what they know, they do a disservice to the hours they’ve spent pouring over notes and textbooks.
At My Performance Learning, years of teaching experience have helped us understand how to improve time management in exams. And it’s quite simple. At the core of effective time management is an understanding of their ability and the skills to manage feelings of stress.
The Science of exam time management
Now, nerves can be an important tool. Studies show that a stress response increases oxygen to the brain. This is very helpful for a student who has to write and think quickly! However, too much stress and cortisol starts to trigger a fight or flight response. Glucose is released to the muscles instead of the hippocampus, and memory retrieval and decision-making take a hit.
The key difference between nerves and a flight or fight response is the way a student views their exam. When children start perceiving an exam as a threat, whether that be as a threat to their identity, their schooling or their career, the beginnings of a fight or flight response start to emerge.
Studies suggest that if children can perceive exams not as a threat but as a manageable challenge, they can produce an optimal stress response and harness its benefits. The exam time management tips below are centred on helping your children to both see the exam as manageable and feel confident about their ability to complete the task within the time limit.
1. Knowing the format of the exam
Understanding the format of the exam is paramount. Once you have a sense of the exam’s distinct sections, encourage your children to practise a certain strategy that responds to this format. How does 20 minutes for the first section, 30 minutes for the second section and 40 minutes for the final section work? Does it need a little tweaking? If so, change it up!
Once your children have discerned timings that work for them, it’s important to stick to them. There’s a tendency to perfect a question and eat into the time allocated for the following question, but that habit tends to erode the time for gaining the easiest marks at the start of the following question.
2. Reading the question
This may sound like an obvious exam time management tip, but reading the question can save time in a number of ways. If your child has entirely understood the question they’re less likely to tweak or change answers at the end.
For longer questions, underlining important words or numbers with their pen will help them to better comprehend the question and make it quicker to refer back. At My Performance Learning, one of the key pillars of our approach to improving a child’s exam confidence is equipping them with these techniques through fun digital lessons.
3. Planning structures and using lists
For humanities subjects in particular, it can be very useful for your children to make a list of points they’ll make, or paragraphs they’re going to write. Doing so allows them to do the brainstorming at the beginning of the session when they’re fresh.
Additionally, by restricting decision-making to the beginning of the exam, your children avoid shifting between the brain system involved in writing cohesive sentences and the brain system required for decision-making. Flicking between them will fatigue the brain and slow the pace.
A structure is especially helpful in the final few minutes of the exam, when cortisol may have spiked and their decision-making has been impaired. A list may allow them to follow their initial thoughts and conclude just in time.
4. Maintaining a realistic approach
This goes hand in hand with using lists. Encourage your children to make an honest assessment of how many pages they can write. Knowing the speed of their own writing will lend a sense of realism to the way they plan. Encourage children to write structures in their practice exams so they understand what they are truly capable of.
The other element of this exam time management tip is knowing when to skip a question. It’s easy for children to languish on a difficult question. If they haven’t made progress after a couple of minutes, it’s a good idea to move forward. The easiest marks to attain are the ones at the beginning of the question. It’s better to have answered all the questions in brief than it is to have answered one question in depth.
5. Writing quickly
One of the simplest ways to gain time back is by speeding up handwriting. Writing smaller is one of the simplest ways to speed up writing. Encourage your children to use a fine-tip pen that will allow them to write with small characters but maintain legibility. When stressed, it can be tempting to write in large font, but it will slow them down.
Writing vertically reduces time, too. Slanting your writing elongates the forms of your letters, and you spend more time moving the pen to the left on the downstrokes. It may also be worthwhile writing out a sentence and assessing which letters can be reduced to a simpler form.
But this isn’t an exam time management tip to be implemented the day of! Changing your handwriting takes time and practice to master. It pays to start practising some months before the exam, so these techniques become habitual for children, and don’t detract from a student’s mental energy in the exam.
6. Avoiding the last-minute rush
It’s best to avoid finishing the exam as the time runs out. Attempting to finish a section or answer in a limited amount of time will trigger a more extreme stress response that won’t be helpful for either writing or recalling information. The below may help them avoid this.
Allocating time for review in the structure. Just five minutes at the end may allow your children to correct grammar mistakes or illegible writing that may otherwise cost them marks. Encourage your children to ask for more scripts or paper before the moment of need. If they know they write large and/or quickly, they should ask for paper at the very beginning.
Children can either star or fold the edges of questions they intend to come back to. It sounds like a minimal gain, but it can help when in a rush at the end of the exam.
The question of how to improve time management in exams requires practise. It requires experimentation, too and a bit of time to try out a few methods that give your children the best shot at demonstrating their knowledge and ability.
Of course, the exam time management tips above provide children with a framework for feeling confident going into an exam, but sometimes it takes either a course or an expert to make meaningful change. At My Performance Learning we offer a means for helping your child to achieve their best marks.
Using years of teaching experience and scientific research we have designed a platform that can not only discern your child’s weaknesses, like exam time management, but also provide the appropriate online teaching that will help them to improve. For more, head over to our parents page to see how you could double your child’s grades.
