Top 5 Test-Taking Strategies for Students

How to Improve Your Child’s Test Performance

It’s frustrating when your bright, capable child comes home with disappointing test scores. The natural response is often to tell them to “study more.” But better grades don’t always come from studying longer. Often, how your child studies matters just as much as how much they study.

Classroom tests affect grades, and grades can influence placement, course opportunities, and the academic record your child carries into high school and college admissions. Learning how to study effectively now can pay off for years to come.

Study Strategies 1 and 2

1. Preview the test before starting

Teach your child that when they first get started on a test, they should quickly look ahead at the whole test to see what’s coming. This helps with pacing and endurance.

2. Get quick wins first

Many tests give the same amount of weight to every question, so it’s important to get all the easier questions first. This is also a good strategy for building confidence.

Studying matters. But the test itself is a performance situation. A student can lose points because they do not manage the test well, go too fast, or succumb to test anxiety.

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Study Strategies 3 and 4

3. Pace themselves

In timed tests, pacing is critical. You might think all you have to do is divide the number of questions by the time allotted to get the average time per question, but the reality is that you need a more sophisticated pacing strategy that comes with practice. You also need to teach your child how to go fast enough to avoid running out of time but not so fast that they make mistakes.

4. Read directions carefully

Not reading directions carefully is one of the most common mistakes students make. They might miss a direction that says choose the best answer. Or they may solve for Z and realize too late that the question is asking for the answer to X+2.. Slowing down and reading directions carefully is easy to say but hard for many students, especially those with quick brains.

You might be asking yourself, how do I teach these skills to students?  As parents, you are not experts on study skills. Get help from TestingMom, the leader in Gifted Test Prep for over 15 years. We understand what it takes to consistently perform well on tests.

Test and School Success Skills from TestingMom helps parents teach the academic habits, test-taking strategies, and school routines that strong students use every day.

Study Strategy 5

5. Show work

Most elementary and middle school teachers care about the “how” of the question, not just the outcome. So students who show their work and make a small mistake along the way can earn partial credit. This is a skill that most kids do not do naturally; it takes practice and review to do this consistently.

Your Child May Know the Material and Still Underperform

Many parents assume that if a child studies enough, the test score will take care of itself.

That is not always true.

Students also need to know how to take tests well. They need to read directions carefully, pace themselves, move past hard questions, check their work, recover when they get stuck, and review mistakes afterward so the same errors do not keep happening.

So parents end up saying things like:

“Slow down.”
“Be more careful.”
“Check your work.”

Then they get frustrated when their child’s behavior doesn’t change. If you really want your child to change their behavior, you need a curriculum that teaches these skills in an informed, convincing method. This is where TestingMom’s School Success Skills curriculum can help you.

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