What is the Best Time of Day to Take Tests?

Author's Note: I haven't written a real essay in a long time, so I decided to try it again. This piece is on my opinion on what is the best time of day to learn. My focus is word choice.


Beep, Beep. It's 5:30 AM, and your alarm is blaring. Time to get up, and start the day. My bus arrives at school, and I head to my first hour class. As the teacher gives announcements I struggle to stay awake. I'm closing my eyes when I here the word test. As my teacher gives me the paper, I examine the problems. At least I try to examine them. I am so tired,  I can't contemplate the problems on the page. Taking tests in the first few hours of the day are bad because you just woke up, and most kids are still tired.

Most students prefer to stay up late and sleep in late. School starts at 7:30 in the morning which makes some kids wake up at 6:00 or earlier to get ready. Most kids stay up past 10:00 an with that being said, they can't get the 8.5-9 hours they need. This means that since the students are so tired, their test scores will go down.

Although, testing early may not be the best for some students, there are some plus sides to it. Taking tests first thing in the morning allows students to "get it over with". If we take tests right away the students can take them and be able to relax for the rest of the day. This seems like a good idea, because, then students can concentrate the rest of the day on the rest of their classes.

I think that the best time to take test would be second or third hour. This is because first hour, students are to tired to concentrate, fifth hour, students are distracted and ready to go home, and fourth hour is right before lunch so students are hungry. Second or third hour is right in the middle, so it gives students a chance to wake up, but not so much that they can't concentrate.

Over the weekends, most teenagers stay up late and don't get up until mid-afternoon. During the school week, students often still stay up late, but are forced to get up early. Schools shouldn't make students test right away in the morning, because they are still waking up. In reality testing at a later time is and advantage to the school because the better test scores students get, the better the school looks.

"Adolescent Sleep." Research. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2012. <nysut.org/research/bulletins/981202adolescentsleep.html>.

"Top 10 Weirdest Clocks | Top 10 Hell." Top 10 Hell. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2012. <http://top10hell.com/top-10-weirdest-clocks/>.