By Wayne F. Perkins

Are you ready to take your final examinations? Do you feel confident you will pass your tests?

Here are five great tips that will help you achieve higher test scores and reduce stress associated with taking your tests, at same time. As a hypnotist, I have worked with thousands of students in, junior high school, high school, and college. I find these tips help all students overcome anxiety caused by test taking, and improve memory and recall. The results are better examination scores.

1. Get a good night sleep before test. Do not stay up all night. Your brain works so much better after a good night's sleep. You will carry a relaxed and confident feeling into testing classroom or lecture hall.

2. Breathe deeply. When you find yourself in classroom, begin breathing deeply and deliberately. Think to yourself, test will be easy, and you feel confident in improved grade you will attain after taking test.

When teacher passes out your test and it is in your hand, take three slow deep breaths. Each time you inhale; feel energy entering your body. Feel energy stimulate your brain. Each time you exhale, picture, and feel all of tension leaving your lungs.

Dysgraphia is a learning disability that affects writing abilities. It can manifest itself as difficulties with spelling, poor handwriting and trouble putting thoughts on paper. Because writing requires a complex set of motor and information processing skills, saying a student has dysgraphia is not sufficient. A student with disorders in written expression will benefit from specific accommodations in learning environment, as well as additional practice learning skills required to be an accomplished writer.

What are warning signs of dysgraphia? Just having bad handwriting doesn't mean a person has dysgraphia. Since dysgraphia is a processing disorder, difficulties can change throughout a lifetime. However since writing is a developmental process -children learn motor skills needed to write, while learning thinking skills needed to communicate on paper - difficulties can also overlap.

If a person has trouble in any of areas below, additional help may be beneficial:

Tight, awkward pencil grip and body position

Illegible handwriting

Avoiding writing or drawing tasks

Tiring quickly while writing

Saying words out loud while writing

Avoiding writing or drawing tasks

Unfinished or omitted words in sentences

Difficulty organizing thoughts on paper

Difficulty with syntax structure and grammar

Large gap between written ideas and understanding demonstrated through speech

What strategies can help?

There are many ways to help a person with dysgraphia achieve success. Generally strategies fall into two categories:

Accommodations: providing alternatives to written expression

Remediation: providing instruction for improving handwriting and writing skills Each type of strategy should be considered when planning instruction and support. A person with dysgraphia will benefit from help from both specialists and those who are closest to person. Finding most beneficial type of support is a process of trying different ideas and openly exchanging thoughts on what works best.

Below are some examples of how to teach individuals with dysgraphia to overcome some of their difficulties with written expression:

Early Writers -

·Use paper with raised lines for a sensory guide to staying within lines.

·Try different pens and pencils to find one that's most comfortable.

·Practice writing letters and numbers in air with big arm movements to improve motor memory of these important shapes. Also practice letters and numbers with smaller hand or finger motions.

·Encourage proper grip, posture and paper positioning for writing. It's important to reinforce this early as it's difficult for students to unlearn bad habits later on.

·Use multi-sensory techniques for learning letters, shapes and numbers. For example, speaking through motor sequences, such as "b" is "big stick down, circle away from my body."