I recommend asking the parent to complete the Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale for a quick, reliable measure of anxiety in young children who can’t necessarily express their feelings.

To help determine whether anxiety is impairing or interfering in children’s lives, I ask the following questions using the acronym FISH. (This can be applied to children of all ages.) Frequency — What is the frequency of the child’s anxious behaviors? Is it every day? Once a week? Once a month? Intensity — How intense is the child’s anxiety on a scale of 1 to 10? Severity — How severe is the child’s anxiety on a scale of 1 to 10? How long — How long have anxious behaviors occurred?

The following tendencies among children should send up red flags: Overestimating a threat: “I’m going to get COVID. I’m going to die.” Difficulty tolerating uncertainty: “I don’t know what’s going to happen if I go to school. What’s going to be there? I don’t know that I can handle it.” Underestimating the ability to control a situation: “I never will be able to handle all this uncertainly. It is going make me really sick to my stomach or feel like I’m going to die.” Feeling increased responsibility: “If I get sick and I get my parents sick, it’s my fault. They will never forgive me.”

Educators should strive to create supportive atmospheres and equip their students with tools to independently express their areas of EF need. Educators can use what we call the “Four Tiers of Support” to set up this system in the classroom and beyond. They include: Teaching common EF language Identifying strengths and areas of need Setting up a classroom to support all students Teaching self-advocacy skills

To help address test anxiety, researchers recommend setting aside a little time for simple writing or self-talk exercises before the test—they allow students to shore up their confidence, recall their test-taking strategies, and put the exam into perspective.

Students who study moderately should get roughly 70 to 80 percent of the questions correct. 

Don’t start a test with challenging questions; let students ease into a test. Asking difficult questions to probe for deep knowledge is important, but remember that confidence and mindset can dramatically affect outcomes—and therefore muddy the waters of your assessment. 

while we all experience anxiety, we seldom take the time to engage the emotion and give it the respect it deserves. Ignoring anxiety does not make it go away; it compounds until we fight, flee, or freeze – are we attending to these adaptive responses that tell us something is wrong? Even a persistent low level of anxiety has deleterious effects on our body and mind. If we do not respect anxiety, we virtually guarantee that we will not be performing at our best which can further drive rumination and further deleterious anxiety.

helps us see anxiety as a biological system that has evolved for our protection but is flexibly under our influence. Bringing together an array of up-to-date research, she integrates the neuropsychology of both top-down and bottom-up processes into a set of practices that allow us to take advantage of the neuroplasticity of the system: relaxing the body, calming the mind, redirecting and reappraising, monitoring responses, and learning to tolerate the uncomfortable.

When teachers have a better understanding of the brain’s memory systems, they can help students develop stronger study habits and engage them in deep learning. 

In classrooms, some students absorb and master these skills faster than others. Oakley calls these “race car learners” who zoom to the finish line. In contrast “other students have hiker brains,” says Oakley. “They get to the finish line, but more slowly.”

It’s also why many students struggle at following multi-step directions. It’s not a lack of focus. Their working memory simply does not have the capacity to “keep in mind” something like a five-step process –  unless they’ve practiced those steps so many times that it has become a routine that doesn’t require active thought. That’s why skilled teachers spend so much time at the beginning of the year establishing classroom procedures and thinking routines. These practiced routines can free up working memory space for students to learn novel material.