For teachers and students alike, standardized testing week (or weeks) can be incredibly stressful. And if you work with English learners or struggling students, you know your students can get especially anxious when standardized testing rolls around.

So what can you do to make sure all the hard work your students have put in over the past six months doesn’t go to waste? Here are five tips for helping your students beat testing stress and do their very best on those all-important tests.

They might not know it, but many of your students are already using good test-taking strategies. So take a few minutes to brainstorm good strategies as a class, and then add a few of your own helpful tips to the list. Once you’ve got a pretty good list, discuss which strategies students will use as they’re taking tests. By the time testing week arrives, your students will have a whole arsenal of good test-taking strategies to help them do their best.

Here are a few test-taking strategies to help you get started:

• Read all directions carefully.
• Read the question and all answer choices before marking your answer.
• If you’re not sure of an answer, eliminate any answers you know are wrong. Then, make your best guess.
• Don’t spend too much time on difficult questions—do your best, then move on.
• Come back to questions you haven’t answered at the end of the test.
• Before reading a long passage, read the questions you’ll be answering about the passage so you know what to look for as you read.
• If you finish early, use the last few minutes of test time to check your answers, correct mistakes, and check to make sure you have answered all the questions.

Research shows that getting enough sleep helps kids remember the things they’ve learned. But while most students in first through fifth grades need 10–11 hours of sleep each night, the average student only gets 8 or 9. To fight test-week fatigue, encourage your students to develop healthy sleep habits by holding a class-wide challenge to get at least 10 hours of sleep each night for one week.

Hunger is another factor that can affect kids’ test-taking success, so if you know some of your students don’t have access to healthy breakfasts at home, bring in granola bars and bananas to share before class, or help them get signed up for your school’s free breakfast program.

If you can, get parents involved by sending home reminders that test week is coming up, Ask them to help their students get adequate rest and a good breakfast on test days.

Help students build their testing confidence by using practice tests to give them a feel for what test week will be like. Having students take one practice test each week during the month leading up to testing week can help them feel calm and confident when the real test lands on their desks.

No time for practice tests? Spend some time talking to your students about what testing days will be like. Walk them through the testing process and answer any questions they have.

The more comfortable your students are with the process of testing, the less stressed they’ll be and the better they’ll perform when the big week arrives.