The Big Test: How We Experience Short-Term Stress

You will need the free Adobe Acrobat reader to view this file.

Description
In this activity, teachers will induce mild stress in students by announcing they are about to have a quiz that will be a major part of their grade. Once students learn that this is not true, they will describe their physical and mental changes in response to this stress.

Relevant Standards
This activity fulfills science and health education standards.

Objectives
Students will:

• Experience and describe a situation of short-term stress
• Record and analyze their physical and mental reactions to the stressful situation
• Make generalizations about how humans react to short-term stress, including that different people respond to stress in different ways

BAM! Body and Mind Resources:

• Feelin' Frazzled...? — 10 suggestions for relieving short-term stress.
• Got Butterflies? Find Out Why. — An interactive feature that teaches what short-term and long-term stress do to the body and how to cope with them.