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Question: There seems to be a lot of information out there with regards sleep and brain functioning. If a student has no exam in the morning and has an exam at 1.30, what would you advise in terms of sleeps and naps and so on for peak performance? Also, how can they keep themselves fresh for peak performance between exam time slots?
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anon answered on 27 Apr 2015:
There is also a lot of studies on the benefits of sleep on helping anxiety. Encouraging students to get a good night sleep instead of pulling an ‘all-nighter’ cramming for the test may be useful – as science has shown you actually remember more if you had a proper nights sleep. Here is a nice and short Ted-Ed Talk on the importance of sleep which may be good to show a class a couple days before the exam: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-benefits-of-a-good-night-s-sleep-shai-marcu
As for between exam time slots, a good rule of thumb is 10-20 minutes is enough to give you some benefits without much grogginess since you hit the lighter stages of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. 30 minutes is not benefit – you will wake up groggy before restorative benefits. 60 minute nap is best for improving performance, some grogginess when waking up. 90 minutes is ideal – improving procedural and creative performance and being easier to wake up from.
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mrgsimpson commented on :
Thanks for the response. This goes back to one of my previous questions about the stubbornness of teens. When you tell them getting a good night’s sleep is vital, many think that cramming is even more so! It’s another case where we have to keep on knocking at the door and persuade them that the research in science can give them marginal gains in terms of improving their performance.
As for the second comment, doesn’t this show the problems of teenage brains more generally with regards sleep? I believe it was said at a Wellcome Trust Neuro event that one of the few things that was generally agreed in the science and learning communities is that the school day should start later if really want to help student learning but alas this is very unlikely to occur in the majority of cases.