by Mary Kay Morrison

More then half our students admit to test anxiety. We know that reducing that anxiety improves student performance. While not every teacher can tell a joke, nearly every experienced teacher has a bag of tricks for lightening things up to improve learning. Reaching into that bag at assessment time, and adding more humor to the mix, can send the dopamine up and the anxiety down.

Turn Testing Upside Down
Start by redefining testing from a source of anxiety to a celebration of learning, and then incorporate that viewpoint into test preparation:

• Hold study sessions that intersperse joke time with study skills strategies.
• Incorporate game formats. Invite students to write test questions in a Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, Charades, Wheel of Fortune, or Finish Line format.
• Use jokes, puns, and riddles. One teacher has students create riddle test questions, uses the riddle questions as a study guide, and includes the best riddles on the test.

If you are having fun, your students will be more likely to participate, and improve their learning and testing-taking performance.

Turn Test Day into “Party Day”

1. Replace anxiety with positive excitement over creating posters, balloons, and streamers.
2. Play relaxing student-chosen music before testing begins.
3. Award prizes to students who get at least seven hours of sleep.
4. Before the test, include jokes by students or the teacher.

Include Humor in Teacher Made Tests
You can reduce anxiety and even make your tests something students look forward to by infusing light-heartedness, and including a sprinkling of humor. Smile-inducers might include:

1. Who is your favorite teacher?
   1. Mary Kay Morrison
   2. Ms. Morrison
   3. Both 1 and 2
   4. All of the above
2. What would Scooby Doo?
3. Write a Letterman Top Ten List with additional things you learned from this unit for ten extra credit points.

Take Fun Seriously
Don’t forget to have fun yourself. If you are having fun, your students will be more likely to participate, and improve their learning and testing-taking performance in the process. Check out assessment and test preparation guidelines and tips in Glencoe/McGraw-Hill teacher resources. And remember—make humor a purposeful component of your lesson plans and your assessments.

About the Author: Mary Kay Morrison, Director of Humor Quest, is an educator and trainer. She is the author of Using Humor to Maximize Learning, Roman and Littlefield Publishing Group, Lanham, Maryland, 2008. Her work explores the relationship between positive emotionality and learning. Contact her at http://www.questforhumor.com or marykay@questforhumor.com