Tooled Up Education

Multidimensional Test Anxiety Scale (MTAS) User’s Manual

This user’s manual was produced by Professor David Putwain and colleagues to accompany the MTAS questionnaire, which measures test or examination anxiety in populations of secondary school students, aged 11 to 19 years. It is intended for use by school practitioners (such as teachers, school pastoral and support staff, educational and school psychologists, and school counsellors) and others who wish to identify highly test anxious students who may benefit from support or intervention, or to evaluate changes in test anxiety before and after intervention.

Professor Tamsin Ford Answers All of Your Questions

Leading psychiatrist, Professor Tamsin Ford, joins us to answer your top questions about anything and everything related to raising children. This open and honest interview draws on both Professor Ford’s expertise and her personal experiences and covers topics as diverse as aspiration, the school assessment system, adoption and gender. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Children’s Books about Loneliness or Isolation

This list of books for children and tweens all feature characters dealing with situations where they feel lonely or isolated and who deal with their emotions by going on adventures, finding new friends and expressing themselves in a variety of ingenious ways. If your child is lonely, or you think that they might be, these stories can help to kickstart conversations about how they are feeling and things they can do to help. They may also help them to understand that feeling lonely sometimes is very common and that they aren’t alone.

Managing Your Gremlin

It’s really important to be kind to other people, but it’s just as important to be kind to ourselves. Sometimes, we might think bad or negative things about ourselves. These kinds of thoughts tend to make us feel worse! It’s important to notice when we think like this and stand up to these unhelpful little ‘gremlin thoughts’. This activity can help!

My Coping Menu

When we feel strong emotions, such as sadness, anger, fear or anxiety, it’s useful to have a toolkit of things we can do that we know will help to make us feel better. Encourage children to choose from our suggested menu of options (or come up with their own) to create a list of go-to people and activities that they know will help when they feel overwhelmed, down in the dumps or cross. Keep it to hand, so that they can access it as soon as these feelings arise.

My Reflections on Anxiety and Worry

It’s a good idea to encourage teens to reflect on any anxieties that they have, help them to think through how these worries make them feel and prompt them to come up with some things that might help to alleviate them. This could be listening to music, meeting a friend or having some go-to breathing exercises. This activity invites teens to think about things that make them worried, things that make them excited and some goals that they might like to set for the coming term at school.

15 Tips to Help Children Who Feel Anxious About Dental Appointments

Visiting the dentist can be a cause of great anxiety for some children, and if these worries become severe, they can have a significant detrimental impact on their oral health. If your child feels wobbly about going to the dentist, we’ve put together 15 tips that can really help.

Wobble Ladder: Overcoming Anxiety

When children have ‘wobbles’, or anxieties, one of the best ways to overcome them is to take gradual steps towards having a go at the thing that worries them. This Wobble Ladder is a useful tool for setting out small, step by step goals. As your child climbs the ladder, make sure that they get a little reward for each goal that they achieve.

Managing A Level Test Anxiety: Tips for Parents

Any parents of pupils ages 16-18 years old should tune in to this video to hear Dr Weston’s top tips on reducing your teens’ anxiety about tests. Learn how to support them effectively and be their biggest cheerleader.