How to help your students eliminate their exam anxiety to stay calm and in control

A  10 week mindfulness based course to change how students behave at exam time

I help teachers and schools work with their students to manage their levels of exam stress with my course 'Creating a Personal Exam Reaction Plan’ so they can change how they react to their feelings of overwhelm and show their potential…   here's how ...

You’ve just been through a stressful period of summer exams. Exam time is a period of heightened pressure for you and your students, and many may have been overwhelmed by anxiety for their upcoming exams.

So what’s the best way to stop your students stressing out over exams, so that they do better? What’s the best way to help:

  • your students, who are stressed to the max over exams
  • your colleagues, who want to help their students
  • your parents, looking to the school to support their children through this period
  • your school, which is always concerned with their end of year results

.

We know that fear and stress stops them being able to do their best and pushes some students to act out in class, or miss class altogether. 

This needs a lot of special staff support as you try all kinds of way to help them cope with the feelings exams bring up for them.

Your teaching colleagues too may have felt unsure how best to help the students do well, and shared the frustration that their hard work doesn’t always get the results you all want.

Poor results aren’t good for anyone.

On top of this, as exams got nearer you may have heard from anxious parents who wanted the school to find ways to help their children struggling at home.

Students are still showing their lack of coping skills with their challenging behaviour.

Perhaps they’ve had a lot of self-doubt, they’ve not been taking care of themselves and struggle to stay in class.

Looking back at your recent exam period you can see it’s been a hard, stressful period for everyone.

You may not have known HOW to support your students so they succeed in their exams. You don’t know how to make the difference you need.

What can you do? What do most schools do?

Most schools try to ‘brush away’ the problem without any kind of stress-management solution.

But unless you've been able to change:

  • how your students Think About Themselves and
  • how to manage their thoughts and still their mind

you may not have been able to break down the patterns of behaviour they’ve got used to.

If you still have a number of over-anxious students, unwilling or unable to do their exams, then clearly, the current way hasn’t had the results you wanted.

Maybe you’ve tried things before but they haven’t worked. Or The students weren’t ready. Or you feel unsure what to do.

What you do know, is that Subject Skills alone won’t get your anxious students into that Exam Room.

Something has to change before exams come around again. No matter how much they've studied, if their panic kicks in when it counts, it's all been wasted.

And the clock is ticking down.

So what needs to change?

What needs to change is how you join up the 3 essentials things you need working together to eliminate exam stress, once and for all. They are:

1. Thinking Stills 2. Mindfulness Techniques 3. Teamwork

 

Thinking Skills. Teach your students how to Think Well so they know when and how their fear comes up. This way they make better decisions in how to act when they feel anxious.

Mindfulness Techniques.  Introduce proven Mindful techniques to your students and show them how to use them to calm their minds and ease their thoughts.

Teamwork.  Make sure your Student Support Team and Staff are all working to the same objective, and following the same programme. When you all have the same focus your students get the best everyone. 

Based on these 3 Essentials for Stress Support, your The Solution to their exam stress is "Create Your Personal Exam Reaction Plan"

This is the Mindful way to change how your students think about exams

If you're a Pastoral Lead, Head of Year or Wellbeing Lead, this  is how you can help your students overcome their fears and change how they manage their exam stress, once and for all!

But this isn’t the same as other Mindful programmes you may have seen.

This course is based on a Mindful ‘Change Process’.

It asks your students to be responsible for HOW they change their behaviour and it expects them to AGREE how they’ll do that.

As they start their Student Stress Lessons, you’ll help them create their own ‘Contract’ and this will show how much they’re willing to be involved in changing how they think and behave around exams.

Making  your students responsible  encourages them to choose their own Mindful  solutions to the levels of stress they’re feeling.

Here's what's in the programme.

Create Your Personal Exam Reaction Plan

Your Teacher and Student Exam Stress Solution

Your Teacher Package includes 5 Training PowerPoints and a Teacher Workbook

The series of 5 PowerPoints can be delivered as CPD over one day (6 hours) or followed within Teams for small group work. It is recommended they’re delivered within a 2-week period, to allow you 8 weeks (one student session a week) to complete the course.

Your Fillable PDF Teacher Workbook

We can all agree that teachers often don't have time to get together to work on new ideas.

Your accompanying Teacher Workbook gives everyone the chance to talk things through and share their thoughts. It also makes sure that everyone is 'on the same page' ready to deliver the same standards of Mindfulness to your students.

Allowing enough 'Workbook Time' for Break Out sessions will help you plan how to fit the course material into your current delivery plan.

Your Student Package includes 8 x Student Stress Session PowerPoints and a Student Workbook

The Student Package

Creating a Personal Student Reaction Plan comes with 8 PowerPoints complete with Teaching Notes, and 1 x fillable pdf student workbook to help them learn how to cope with their feelings around exams. Through these lessons you’ll teach your students Mindful ways to manage their exam stress. The workbook will help them feel responsible for the changes in behaviour that they’ll agree with you along the way

8 Student Stress PowerPoint Lessons

Fillable Student Workbook

The student workbook includes exercises to help your groups work through the ideas you share with them.

It contains many Mindful ways to help them manage their feelings along with key documents including the Mindful Matrix and Draft Reaction Plan Template.

"This is an excellent resource that is suitable for learners of all ages. This suite of resources would be a welcome addition to any well-being pastoral toolkit. It shares numerous strategies to help learners deal with the very real stress felt during assessment/exam time and would also fit perfectly within the PSHE curriculum and help learners and staff alike gain awareness"

Emma Maryan
Outreach Tutor, HMP Norwich

Total Payment

ÂŁ797

  • 5 xTeacher PowerPoints
  •  Teacher Workbook
  •  8 x Student  PowerPoints
  • Student Workbook
  • Accompanying session mp3s
Register Now

INSTALMENT PLAN

ÂŁ427 x 2

  • 5 xTeacher PowerPoints
  •  Teacher Workbook
  •  8 x Student  PowerPoints
  • Student Workbook
  • Accompanying session mp3s
Register Now

Guarantee

I am confident in how Create Your Personal Exam Reaction Plan can change how your students manage their exam stress.  I offer a 60-day “Do the Work” guarantee.

Both your Teaching Team and your Students must complete the course ad course workbooks to be able to show how they have used the course content.

If, after practicing those exercises and techniques they commit to as part of their Compact and Mindfulness Matrix, you and your students do not experience any shift in how they manage their exam stress, I will refund your investment.

Your satisfaction is my No 1 aim, and I’m committed to making sure you get the value - and the change you deserve for your work.

"These resources will really help learners who want to overcome their own personal barriers when it comes to exams. There are so many different techniques taught in the course that there will be something that everyone can take away to help them and not just in the exam room! "

Cherry Greenacre
Pastoral Assistant, Norwich

Create Your Personal Exam Reaction Plan is a Mindful ‘Change Course’ to help you change how your students think about and manage their levels of exam stress.

It helps your students unpick how they’ve come to react to stress and shows them how that’s got set into their own panic spiral of behaviour.

As they take more responsibility for their behaviour you'll be showing them how to choose kinder and calmer solutions to help them manage the levels of stress they’re feeling.

When we invest in our own stress solutions, we’re ‘in’. Getting your students to create an agreement here is key to their success. 

As they take more responsibility for their behaviour you'll be showing them how to choose kinder and calmer solutions to help them manage the levels of stress they’re feeling.

Once they see that they can change these set patterns, you’ll share a range of well-respected Mindful techniques to help them handle any unpleasant feelings that come up.

The more opportunities they have to practice their chosen exercises, the more these Mindful responses will become their ‘new normal’. 

It’s these they will begin to turn to, to replace their previous behaviour in times of stress.

In the process, you’ll have taught them a new level of self-awareness and resilience to help them perform at their best when under pressure.

This has the potential to help them far beyond handling Exam Stress.  It will be their go-to way to handle any future stress they have in life.

By investing in my programme today you have the potential to help them far beyond handling Exam Stress. 

The stress management solutions you share with them from Create Your Personal Reaction Plan will become their go-to way to handle any future stress they have in life.

Your course library will give you access to all the tools, resources and techniques, you need to help your students master their exam stress, valued at over ÂŁ2000! This includes:

Let's Recap

Teacher Training Materials including

  • 5 ready to go PowerPoint presentations to train your teachers how to deliver the Create a Personal Exam Reaction Plan course (valued at ÂŁ39)
  • Fillable Teacher Workbook with handouts for group work (valued at £69)

.

Materials for Student Stress Sessions

  • 8 x Powerpoint Lesson Plans complete with Notes for classroom delivery covering mindfulness based techniques for stress management (valued at ÂŁ629)
  • Fillable Student Workbook with Compact Outline and Mindfulness Matrix to guide students through the practical exercises (valued at £157)
  • Mindful Matrix and Reaction Plan document templates (valued at £39)
  • Supporting topic mp3 audios to help you deliver the exam stress concepts  (valued at £149)

That makes everything you get worth more than ÂŁ2000!

Creating a Personal Exam Reaction Plan can support you and your students in finding long term solutions to exam stress.

I recommend you start to prepare your students for their exams  as early as possible to give everyone the time they need to make Mindfulness THE WAY they choose to respond to any exam stress they feel.

Will you be ready?

How do you put a value on the cost of helping your students handle their exam stress?

 

You might consider doing a 6-day residential course for ÂŁ1245 or hiring a mindfulness teacher or education consultant charging ÂŁ180+ per hour. Over your 10-week exam lead-in period this could easily exceed over ÂŁ1800 in total expenses.

But why spend more when you can invest in Create Your Personal Exam Reaction Plan programme for only ÂŁ797?

You’ll get access to a range of resources shared with expert guidance, without draining your school budget.

And there’s no wait to start class, or a period of staff training to timetable for.

What’s more – you’ll be able to repeatedly use the materials year after year, for each new cohort of exam students! 

How’s that for value!

Creating a Personal Exam Reaction Plan will help you build on your school’s exam resilience plan, making your exam stress strategy more and more effective, each time you deliver it.

Remember - with our Creating an Exam Reaction Plan, you’ll not only save time and effort but also gain access to strategies and techniques designed to teach students how to turn their exam fear into focus to achieve the calm, centred and controlled response you all want.

Supporting your students’ mental health and well-being during exam periods is not only important for their academic success but it builds a positive school culture and can also positively improve your school’s reputation in your community.

We’ve got the why, the what and the how all ready to go, so let’s do this together now!

 

NOW IT’S TIME TO MAKE A DECISION AND YOU HAVE 2 CHOICES

You could choose to tackle exam stress challenges on your own, without any outside support,  but it could take longer to get that change in thinking and behaviour that you’re after.

When you delay making a choice on using Mindfulness to help your students through their exams, you miss out on sharing lifelong self awareness skills with your students.

Your other choice is to choose Creating a Personal Exam Reaction Plan for your school, and help your students claim back their personal control before next exam time.

With continued practice and school support you will see a change in your anxious exam students

They'll become more confident and self reliant as they learn to use the Mindful techniques you'll be sharing with them.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Create a Personal Exam Reaction Plan programme is suggested as a 10-week course with a new lesson shared with your students each week. 

You can of course go quicker than this and lead more sessions each week, but you will need to allow time for students to practice each technique and make it part of their new Mindful way of responding to their exam stress.

You will also need to allow time for your own Teacher Training delivery beforehand.

This is to get your Teaching Team up to speed and to ensure you are all working with the same material, to the same objectives.

The longer you can continue supporting students either 1:1 or in groups to work on their commitment to change, the more likely you are to see the shifts you both wa

We understand the importance of budget restraints. It can be a challenge to justify an investment in a new exam stress solution to those who make the buying decisions.

But I encourage you to look on Creating a Personal Exam Reaction Plan as just that – an investment in the future potential of your students.

And remember, once you have the programme, it can go on working for you year after year for each new intake of exam students.

Once you see the visible shifts in your students, you’ll be wanting to introduce Mindfulness earlier in the year, to get an even longer run in.

This will give the students more time to let Mindfulness become their new automatic response pattern to exam stress (instead of any previous disruptive behaviour).

You’ll need to decide if your students are worth the investment in their potential.

I’ve designed the course with you in mind! I know you need clear training delivered in the minimum time frame.

It’s why I’ve designed the Teacher Training PowerPoints to fit your schedule.

 And don’t forget the 8 x ‘done for you’ Exam Stress Sessions, complete with teaching notes and delivery PowerPoints. There’s no preparation time required on your part.

Once you and your teaching staff are familiar with the contents, (described in the 5 x Teacher Training PowerPoints) and have timetabled delivery, you’ll find the Student Stress Sessions easy to lead.

I couldn’t make it any easier for you to include this in your schedule.

Ask yourself “Why do our students need us to invest our time in this now?”

I think you already know the answer to that one!

Absolutely! Emotional well-being and personal development are the focus of the course. 

It also promotes self-awareness, resilience, coping strategies  and positive thinking, so it can be an additional and  valuable part of your PSHE curriculum.

Alternatively, pick and choose which areas to bring into your current curriculum.

 Once your Teachers have gone through the Teacher Training programme (5 sessions) and Student Sessions (8) they will be able to see where best to include particular themes into their own lesson content. 

You may also like to share some topics in School Assemblies, set up a Meditation Lunchtime or After School Club or to create designated areas such as a Mindfulness Corner or quiet outdoor space.

There are many ways to deliver the content.

You decide how to make it work best.

There are 2 areas where you are likely to see change.

Your Teaching Staff may find themselves more committed and energised, with increased purpose and confidence as they support your students.

It can give your Teachers more personal staff confidence in leading Mindfulness sessions and this can improve their own levels of stress.

The practice of Mindfulness as a solution to exam stress is an ongoing process and your students and staff will need to time to turn the exercises into new habits.

You may see shifts in a number of key areas: increased focus and attention, improved memory, skills and recall, students feeling calmer and less overwhelmed, and with better self-belief. 

Anyone can benefit from the calm and quiet that Mindful Practice can bring – but it does need commitment.  For the Programme to work – everyone needs to learn the techniques and put them into regular practice.

After a while, these new mindful ways will replace students’ old automatic reactions, that were based on fear they no longer feel.  based on fear.

Set individual objectives, for your students, support them to do  regular practice and look for  the changes that come with Mindful awareness.

This is an online course and the course contents will be available through your personal library login.  You will be sent your details via email after purchase.

The investment is for one school. Download the materials and make them available choose the best way to use them in your setting. The workbooks are fillable pdfs so you may like to load them onto your in-house system to share.

Your course comes in 2 parts – resources for you the Teacher, and Teaching resources to share with your Students. You can use the Teacher Training materials straight away.

It will take time to see results. Only you can decide what you want to measure.

What are your goals? Are you looking for changes in attitude, response behaviour, or are you more concerned with an improvement in Grades? As students get more at ease with how they manage their exam stress, you’ll find they’re able to do better in class.  You may see an improvement in all areas.

Creating a Personal Exam Reaction Plan cannot guarantee any uplift in grade results as that is entirely down to how committed and consistent the students are to using the Mindful techniques to help them calm their feelings.

My aim for you is to change how your students handle themselves at exam time. But the clock is ticking down

... and you need to give your students enough time to make the Mindful way of responding become THEIR way of managing their feelings. That way, the exercises and techniques THEY choose to use, will help them manage their thinking, stay in control and enable them to walk calmly into the exam room and do the best they can when it matters.

                                    Disclaimer

Creating an Exam Reaction Plan takes no responsibility for your school achieving improved results or for your students’ responses to the exam experience.  The quality of your Results cannot be guaranteed, and are dependent on the willingness and work of your students, staff and your school to commit to change.

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