Ready, Set, Test In 3rd grade, regular classroom tests become more frequent and more challenging. During the year, your child's teacher will introduce test-taking strategies in class, including how to read directions and follow them carefully. He must also learn to express his ideas clearly and manage his time. At home, study and read together to help him master the necessary skills. Why This Year? Top Testing Troubles For many students, failure to carefully read and follow directions is the number-one test blunder. Reinforce Study Skills at Home While your child may be able to do homework on her own now, it is unlikely that he will be able to take on the task of studying alone. Set up a quiet study area for your child. Before and After a Test Start by knowing what the test will cover and what format it will be in, so you can help your child prepare properly.
What is Cooperative Learning? Cooperative learning involves more than students working together on a lab or field project. It requires teachers to structure cooperative interdependence among the students. These structures involve five key elements which can be implemented in a variety of ways. More than Just Working in Groups Five key elements differentiate cooperative learning from simply putting students into groups to learn (Johnson et al., 2006). Positive Interdependence: You'll know when you've succeeded in structuring positive interdependence when students perceive that they "sink or swim together." Individual Accountability: The essence of individual accountability in cooperative learning is "students learn together, but perform alone." Implementing the Elements of Cooperative Learning There are a variety of techniques that can be used to promote one or more of the elements of effective cooperative learning groups.
Education Commission of the States--Helping State Leaders Shape Education Policy Gum Chewing Improves Test Performance, Study Suggests | Chewing Gum, Test Taking & Brain Enhancements Want a brain boost? Grab a stick of gum and get chewing, new research suggests. Though you may want to ditch that wad before trying any mental gymnastics, as gum only helps improve test scores if chewed before, not during, testing. The chewing motion gets blood flowing to the head, the researchers suggest, where it improves memory, according to how quickly a test-taker can recall information in the lab. The effect only lasted a few minutes, but researchers think chewing gum before a test could give students an advantage in some ways. "I do not know how things would work when you're testing something learned days or weeks ago, but given the study's findings, I can speculate that if both working memory, episodic memory and general speed of information-processing benefit from gum-chewing, so would many testing situations, which presumably rely extensively on those mental capacities," study researcher Serge Onyper, of St. Gum in the lab The researchers tested 224 undergraduates from St.
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