Last week I finished my level three Mental Health Training and it got me thinking about how I support my students with exam stress. The answer was ‘not much’. I do the usual revision planners/ timetables but I spend all of my time supporting revision (and finishing the spec) rather than strategies to actually help cope with exam stress. Students have always expressed that they are stressed when approaching their exams, so I use to work through what they had already achieved and how they were going to stagger their revision over the remaining weeks – thus talking through revision strategies rather than coping mechanisms. But how can students revise if they are not coping?

So I decided to start researching into strategies for supporting students dealing with exam stress. The lists of ideas were pretty repetitive and seemingly obvious – but then isn’t everything obvious when you already know the coping strategies? So I am going to go through this ppt with different strategies and tips to help my A2’s with exam stress. The reason I am going to cover this now, is to tackle the issue before it becomes an issue. Helping students set up strategies to support themselves now, before the serious stress hits, I hope will be more valuable in the long run.

I have also created a Revision Planner:

And Checklist:

Student’s Support Posters:

All the resources can be downloaded for free from TES here.