Time management tips to follow during exams

“If you want to be more productive, you need to become master of your minutes.” — Crystal Paine.

Many children fret examinations, and one of the principal reasons for this is the time crunch. 

When children are said to do several things within a certain duration of time, it increases the pressure as well as fear of incomplete submission due to having insufficient time and so on. 

At Sherwood High, we believe we can help children face examinations with a lot less fear and a lot more preparation by helping them with time management. By teaching children to efficiently manage their time during examinations, we can help them be stress-free and also perform better. We will discuss some tips on time management during exams in this blog.

1. Go through the entire paper so you know what to expect:

Take an initial couple of minutes of your exam to read through the whole question paper. Take stock of the number of questions there are and the different types of questions that are there, before you start answering. By doing this, you will not miss out on anything at the end of the exams in a hurry as you would have an idea of all the questions that are present and you can also pick out questions that you know very well and choose to write them quickly and pinpoint difficult questions to answer later.

By answering questions that you are well aware of you will have your confidence boosted at the beginning of your exams and starting the exam with what you know well, will save you enough time for questions that you find difficult.

Also, there could be sections that may have options, use this time to make those decisions so that you don’t end up wasting time deciding on which option to work on later. Make sure to utilize this time to read over long or complicated questions twice or more to understand clearly so that you don’t make a mistake that will cost you additional time to fix.

2. Allot specific time for each section or each question:

Even before you start an exam, you could take trial papers or work out on previous exam papers to figure out how much time to allocate to each section of an exam.

Give yourself a minute to decide how much time you will require for every section. As each section is different and might require time depending on them, for example, multiple-choice questions might take comparatively shorter duration than essay questions.

While doing this, remember to set realistic expectations. As in, if you have 30 minutes to complete a short answer or an essay you might not be able to fit in an introduction main body with multiple paragraphs and an efficient conclusion, so when you have set amount of time try to focus on something that is concise and to the point, so you can actually finish the answer and cover ground as well.

Always remember to give yourself a couple of minutes at the end of the test to go over your answers.

3. Read every question thoroughly:

Before starting an answer, read every word of the problem or question to figure out the exact meaning of what it is asking. If you are in a hurry and read a certain question without enough thought, you could misunderstand a statement or a problem incorrectly and end up answering incorrectly as well. 

So give utmost importance to read the questions carefully as much as you would read the answers carefully too. 

4. Save tough questions for later:

Even though you planned your time on every section accordingly there are some times that you could come across a question that stumped you, do not think about it then, skip it and come back to it later. Work on answering the easy questions and the questions you know best, which will not take as long, so that you will have enough time for the harder questions later. 

Some questions put many of us on hold, so do not let a hiccup on the way make you miss out on marks in the rest of the sections as you can always come back to the tricky questions at the end, but the important thing is to keep working through your exam and give yourself enough time for every other question.

You need to make sure you come back to these questions later, try circling them or marking the questions that you have left for later as a reminder so that you don’t forget to answer them.

1. Practice!

One of the most important parts of time management in practice. What we mean here is, when you practice on previous papers or trial questions, instead of just practicing on the questions themselves, you should also practice along with time.

Commit to practicing full question papers, under complete exam conditions and keep working on getting better with time management along with the answers and preparations.

This will not only help you in managing your time during exams but will also save you a lot of pleasure when you get to the actual exam as you are used to it and the practicing will definitely help.

2. Do not rush:

You know that you have worked hard; you have studied, you’ve practiced, you’ve gone through the question paper, you allotted your time accordingly, and you know what to do. So there is no reason to rush or hurry or be tense.

It is very understandable that you might be feeling anxious and would want to hurry to get the exam over with, but pacing yourself is very important in time management. Focus on accuracy rather than speed, calm down and center yourself before you answer. 

3. Your Answers:

Use any extra time to go through your answers instead of finishing your exam and leaving early. Double- any questions that you found difficult and read through your answers to for errors. This can be as simple as spelling errors, as even minor mistakes like these may cost you marks. 

By checking your answers at the end of the exam, you can be sure of not missing anything that you saved for later and also be sure that you have left no question unseen.

To Conclude:

The above tips will help you manage your time during exams, as it is important and will take off pressure considerably and will stop you from making errors in a panic. 

We wish you all the very best!!