TestEdge® Grades 6-8 Teacher’s Kit
Item # 5300 Price: $129.95 $116.95
For Classroom Use
Bridging emotions and academics for student success
Overcome test anxiety and learning blocks. Understand how emotions and attitudes are affecting your academic work. TestEdge is a scientifically validated supplemental classroom program. Students overcome test anxiety and stress, at the same time gaining effective problem-solving, focusing and listening skills. TestEdge focuses on Stress Smarts and Test Smarts, which enhance students’ ability in Fact Smarts. Easy to use and integrates effortlessly into regular curriculums. The Teacher’s Kit includes fully scripted lesson plans designed with flexible teaching schedules.
Stress Smarts: Positive emotion-refocusing techniques proven to lower stress and test anxiety and increase focus and comprehension.
Test Smarts: Advanced test-taking skills and strategies for higher test scores.
Fact Smarts: Subject knowledge and skills (math and reading comprehension). TestEdge helps students improve their ability to absorb and remember the facts and skills taught in their core academic curricula.
What is Test Anxiety?
Test anxiety affects nearly everyone. Anxiety creates a kind of noise or mental static in the brain that blocks our ability to retrieve what’s stored in memory and greatly impairs our ability to comprehend and reason. In testing situations, this means we have trouble remembering facts and difficulty with questions that require thinking or problem-solving. A low score or failing a test doesn’t always mean a student hasn’t learned the material or doesn’t know how to think a problem through; often it means the student hasn’t learned how to deal with the anxiety caused by taking tests.
Why Heart-Based Education?
HeartMath research has identified a measurable physiological state that underlies optimal learning and performance. In this state, our emotions are calm and our brain, nervous system and other bodily systems function with increased synchronization and harmony. In simple terms, we’re highly in sync – physically, mentally and emotionally. In turn, this, facilitates the higher cognitive processes critical for reasoning, creativity and focusing attention – all essential for effective learning, academic achievement and social success.
Scientific Validation
The TestEdge Study was piloted in the Minneapolis Public Schools, conducted by a clinical psychologist and a reading curriculum specialist for 20 high school seniors who had failed the Basic Standards Tests in Reading and Math. According to Dr. Aasen, “The students had the knowledge, but were unable to pass the test because of anxiety and stress.” TestEdge helped ease test-taking anxiety, arming the students with the confidence they needed to feel prepared emotionally and academically. The TestEdge program resulted in a 35% improvement in math scores and 14% improvement in reading scores on the Minnesota graduation exit exam. TestEdge, shown to improve test scores by 30% or more, is a highly effective, research based, supplemental test-preparation and learning-readiness program.
Rollin McCraty, Ph.D, says the key to understanding how anxiety inhibits cognitive and physical performance lies in understanding how emotions affect the rhythmic activity in the nervous system. Feelings like frustration, anger and anxiety cause the neural activity in the two branches of the autonomic nervous system to get out of sync. This in turn affects the synchronized activity in the brain, disrupting our ability to think clearly. In contrast, uplifting feelings such as appreciation lead to increased harmony and
synchronization in the brain and nervous system and facilitate our ability to think clearly. TestEdge shows students how to get in sync and stabilize the brain’s electrical activity.This results in ‘cortical facilitation’, which is associated with improved comprehension, memory recall and the ability to solve problems – all skills that produce positive test results.
Easy to Teach
TestEdge is presented in a flexible format. Its fully scripted lessons can be taught in as few as 20 15-minute sessions or, using the supplemental material and practice sessions, the program can be expanded to 30 10-minute sessions. Total instruction time is six to eight hours.
TestEdge Teacher’s Kit includes:
- Teacher’s manual (fully scripted lesson plans)
- One Student Activity Book
- Three full-color 11 x 17 posters
- Videotape of Perception Experiences
- Overheads and worksheets CD-ROM
- Heart Zones music CD
Student Activity Book:
- 18 lessons
- Graphics, cartoons and factoids
- Interactive exercises and practice worksheets in every lesson to sustain tools
- 48 pages, 8 1/2 x 11, 4-color cover, 2-color inside, softbound
- $4.95 each or school quantity discounts (Order 1 Student Activity Book for each student)
Table of Contents
Lesson 1 – Getting the Edge
Lesson 2 – How Do You Feel About Tests?
Lesson 3 – Types of Smarts
Lesson 4 – Stressed Out?
Lesson 5 – Ways People Respond to Stress
Lesson 6 – Freeze-Frame®: It’s Your Movie
Lesson 7 – Freeze-Frame® Practice
Lesson 8 – When to Use Freeze-Frame®
Lesson 9 – In Sync/Out of Sync – the Inside Story
Lesson 10 – Emotional Memories
Lesson 11 – Test Anxiety
Lesson 12 – Get Creative
Lesson 13 – Attitude Breathing
Lesson 14 – Building Your Focus
Lesson 16 – Taking Stock – Preparing for Your Best Test Performance
Lesson 17 – Test Smart Strategies
Lesson 18 – The Path to Test Success
School quantity discounts for Teacher’s Kit and Student Activity Book