Don’t stress and do your best

Students at Imagine Prep, breathe in and breathe out…exams are here.

The week of testing is a little intimidating, and trust me you aren’t alone. This happens every year, so you should be used to it now and know what to expect. But all you have to do is study and make sure you are getting help if you don’t understand something.

This month of December has been all over the place. Teachers are helping the Prep students to prepare for what’s going to happen, which are, dun dun dunnnnn midterms. What a surprise, not.

When teachers plan for midterms it’s challenging, which was confirmed by Kristina Gibson, a 7th and 8th grade math teacher.

“It is challenging to find assessment questions that might accurately assess what your students know,” Gibson said. “Especially in math, there is not always one way to complete a problem. As the teacher, I must decipher my students’ understanding to determine what grade level they are performing at. It is always difficult for students to take an assessment of content that might be from many months ago. I think it is a struggle to continually address concepts so that they are not forgotten after a unit test.”

A student at Imagine says they are nervous and don’t feel prepared, but they mostly struggle with math. Many students struggle with the subject of math and wonder why it is so challenging.

“I think stress but also upcoming break”, when he hears the word midterms,” Jonathan Gannon, a junior at Imagine Prep said.

Gibson explained that all of the math teachers come together to see how and what they should put on the math midterms.

“As a math team, we do talk about midterms as a group,” she said. “We make sure to vertical align our content, meaning we want to make sure 6th grade is preparing them for 7th grade, and so on. It is important for us to talk about ways to assess students that are similar but grade level appropriate. For example, some of the content in 6th and 8th grade is the same; but the way I ask an 8th grader a question would be different than how a 6th grader would be asked.”

If you’re struggling to study, Gibson provided some tips on how you should study and what will help you study for midterms.

“Be sure to take good notes and keep them the whole year, attend office hours to remediate any misunderstandings, keep assignments to study and always utilize the study guide your teacher gives you,” Gibson said.

Good luck to all IPS students as you prepare to take your midterms and finish out semester one.