How to Study for a Test: A Grade-by-Grade Guide for Canadian Students

What actually works when you study for a test?

In 2013, Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan and Willingham reviewed 10 common study techniques for the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Two came out on top, practice testing and distributed practice, rated highly "because they benefit learners of different ages and abilities". Elaborative interrogation (asking "why is this true?"), self-explanation and interleaved practice rated moderate. Five rated low: summarisation, highlighting, the keyword mnemonic, imagery for text, and rereading.

Most students, the review notes, reread and highlight. Dunlosky cited a survey at an elite university in which 84 percent of the students studied by rereading their notes or textbooks. This guide found no Canadian figure for school-age children. The abstract names the swap directly: "practice testing instead of rereading".

Why does self-testing beat rereading when it feels worse?

In a 2006 experiment, Roediger and Karpicke had 120 Washington University undergraduates each reread one short prose passage and take a recall test on another. Five minutes later, rereading looked better: "restudying produced better recall than testing (81% vs. 75%)". After one week it had flipped, with 56% of the tested passage recalled against 42% of the reread one.

A second experiment in the same paper, with a separate group of students, asked each one how well they expected to remember their passage a week later. Students who only studied it, in four 5-minute periods in which they read the passage about 14 times in all, were the most confident. A week later they recalled 40% of it, against 56% and 61% for students who had swapped one or three of those study periods for recall tests. A child who has reread a chapter three times may feel ready too, and in this study that feeling pointed the wrong way. Judge a study session by a practice quiz score, not by how confident your child sounds.

Those were university students. A 2017 meta-analysis by Adesope, Trevisan and Sundararajan pooled the wider research and found that "practice tests are more beneficial for learning than restudying and all other comparison conditions."

At home, practice testing can be:

• Flashcards, sorted into a "know it" pile and a "not yet" pile.
• A blank page: your child writes everything they remember, then checks the notes for what is missing.
• The chapter's review questions, done before looking at the answers.
• Teaching it back: your child explains the topic as if you had missed the class.

How far ahead should your child start studying?

Earlier than feels necessary, and in pieces. Cepeda, Vul, Rohrer, Wixted and Pashler (2008) taught more than 1,350 people a set of facts, reviewed them after a gap of up to 3.5 months, then tested them up to a year after the review. Measured as a share of the time from the review to the test, the best gap fell from "about 20 to 40% of a 1-week test delay" to "about 5 to 10% of a 1-year test delay".

Say your child first studies a topic a week before the test. That ratio puts the review roughly one to two days later, leaving five to six days before the test. It comes from one large study, so treat it as a guide rather than a timetable. Dunlosky's practical version is to "set aside blocks of time throughout each week to study the content for each class", each one shorter than a cram session and mixing new material with old.

Does mixing up practice problems help in math?

Yes, and the evidence comes from Grade 7 classrooms. Blocked practice is a page of questions on one skill, so the student never has to choose a method. Interleaved practice mixes problem types, so they do.

In a 2014 experiment by Rohrer, Dedrick and Burgess, 140 Grade 7 students practised either way over nine weeks, then took an unannounced test two weeks later. The interleaved material scored 72% against 38% for the blocked material. A pre-registered 2020 trial across 54 Grade 7 math classes found the interleaved group ahead 61% to 38% a month after four months of assignments, and "Teachers were able to implement the intervention without training".

The 2013 Dunlosky review rated interleaving only moderate, before either classroom study, and the 2020 authors still write that "important caveats remain". At home, shuffle the review questions from the last few units and have your child name the method each needs before solving it. For Grade 9, our guide to Grade 9 math in Ontario (MTH1W) covers the course the EQAO test now counts toward.

How to study for a test, grade by grade

The two strong methods work at every age. What changes is who runs them.

Grades 1 to 3

The parent runs the quiz: ask, let your child answer out loud, then show the answer. Dunlosky notes "why" questions may not suit "younger students with low levels of background knowledge", so keep to what and how. The EQAO Grade 3 assessment covers what students "are expected to have learned by the end of Grade 3", so the year's classwork is most of the preparation. Our EQAO practice tests page has questions to try at home.

Grades 4 to 6

Children can start quizzing themselves with flashcards and answering "why is this true?" questions. Ontario report cards also report on study habits. One of the six learning skills is Organization, which includes "devises and follows a plan and process for completing work and tasks". A written plan for test week is practice for that line.

Grades 7 and 8

Both interleaving studies above used Grade 7 math classes, so bring in mixed practice sets. Your child writes the plan for test week, and you check it.

Grades 9 and 10

Study for final evaluations and the OSSLT with practice questions in the real format, spread across the semester, and a running list of every missed question and why. Our six-week OSSLT plan lays out a schedule for the literacy test.

Grades 11 and 12

The gap between first learning and the exam is measured in months rather than days. The Cepeda result says review sessions can sit further apart as the delay grows, but they still need to happen. The sleep studies below were run with students this age.

What tests will your child write in Ontario this year?

EQAO, the Education Quality and Accountability Office, runs the provincial tests. Its next sittings:

• Grade 3 and Grade 6 assessments: reading, writing and math, next window May 4 to June 8, 2027.
• Grade 9 Assessment of Mathematics: next window January 12 to February 5, 2027. From 2026-27 it is the written exam for MTH1W and makes up 20% of the final mark.
• The OSSLT: the fall sitting runs November 3 to 30, 2026, with results reported by the end of January 2027. It measures literacy "across all subjects up to the end of Grade 9", and students "can take the test starting in Grade 10". Successful completion is one of the requirements for the Ontario Secondary School Diploma.

High school marks changed this year. The ministry's Growing Success page, updated 14 October 2026, sets the Grades 9 and 10 mark at 65% classroom work, 20% mandatory final evaluations, and 15% attendance and participation. For Grades 11 and 12 it is 65% classroom work, 25% final evaluations and 10% attendance and participation. The page adds: "Excused absences do not negatively affect a student's mark."

The 2010 Growing Success PDF still gives a 70/30 split, and it stays online "while it is undergoing a review". The current page says its September 2026 update "replaces" that chapter, so the split above applies. Our guide to Ontario's high school exam and attendance rules covers the change.

Report cards set the calendar too. Elementary schools send the progress report card between October 20 and November 20, the first provincial report card between January 20 and February 20, and the second towards the end of June. Semestered high schools report twice a semester. On the provincial report cards, level 3 is the provincial standard. Start a plan from the category and level the teacher names, or from the comment on the fall progress report, rather than from a general "study more". Our explainer on Ontario report card levels covers how to read them.

A countdown for the week before a test

The plan below is for a test a week away. For a semester final, stretch the gaps.

Is cramming the night before ever a good idea?

Not if there is a choice. Huang and colleagues (2016) randomly assigned 56 teenagers aged 15 to 19 to a week of either 5 or 9 hours in bed each night. Each student learned some words over four days and others all at once, "with total study time kept constant across conditions." Spaced learning "conferred strong protection against the effects of sleep restriction on recall performance". The short-sleep students forgot more of what they had crammed.

A daily-diary study by Gillen-O'Neel, Huynh and Fuligni (2013) followed 535 students in Grades 9, 10 and 12. A student who "sacrifices sleep time to study more than usual" had more trouble in class and on tests the next day.

If the test is tomorrow and nothing has been done, self-quiz on the main ideas instead of rereading, and keep the usual bedtime.

How much sleep does a student need before a test?

The Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines recommend 9 to 11 hours a night for children aged 5 to 13 and 8 to 10 hours for teens aged 14 to 17, "with consistent bed and wake-up times". The Canadian Paediatric Society's parent page uses American Academy of Sleep Medicine bands instead: 9 to 12 hours for ages 6 to 12, and 8 to 10 for ages 13 to 18. The teen ranges agree. This guide uses the 24-Hour Guidelines as the Canadian standard.

A second 2016 paper from the same research group, by Lo and colleagues, randomly assigned 56 teenagers from top high schools to a week of either 5 hours in bed (30 students) or 9 hours (26 students), and reported that "Some measures do not recover fully even after 2 nights of recovery sleep." Two nights of catch-up sleep did not undo a short-sleep week on every measure.

How do you stay focused while studying, and where should the phone go?

At school, Policy/Program Memorandum 128 has students in Grades 7 to 12 keep devices "stored out of view and powered off or set to silent mode during instructional time". Nothing in it addresses phones during study at home. Our guide to Ontario's school cellphone rules covers the details.

At home, the research disagrees. A 2017 paper by Ward, Duke, Gneezy and Bos tested a "brain drain" idea and reported, from two experiments, that "the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity". A pre-registered direct replication by a Western University lab (Ruiz Pardo and Minda, 2022) found the effect "did not replicate", and Hartmann and colleagues (2020) found "no overall effect of smartphone presence". A 2023 meta-analysis by Böttger, Poschik and Zierer of 22 studies found "a significant overall negative effect of smartphone use and presence", pooling the two.

Whether a silent phone on the desk matters is disputed. Putting it in another room costs nothing, whichever side turns out right.

Is it good to study with music?

Silence is safest for reading. Vasilev, Kirkby and Angele (2018) pooled 65 studies and found that "background noise, speech, and music all have a small but reliably detrimental effect on reading performance", and "Intelligible speech and lyrical music resulted in the biggest distraction."

A 2023 study of college students by Souza and Leal Barbosa found lyrics hurt memory and reading comprehension, while instrumental lo-fi "did not credibly hinder or improve performance". If your child wants music, instrumental is the smaller risk.

Is exercise good before an exam?

A little movement may help, though the evidence is thin. Hillman and colleagues (2009) tested 20 children around nine and a half years old after 20 minutes of walking on a treadmill at 60% of estimated maximum heart rate, and after resting. After the walk they scored better on the reading part of an achievement test, which counted the words each child pronounced correctly aloud, though not on spelling or arithmetic. That is one small study, and the authors say such bouts "may improve" attention. The Canadian guidelines recommend at least 60 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous activity, so a walk to school on test day fits both.

How do you study with ADHD?

The same methods, with more structure. CADDAC, the Centre for ADHD Awareness, Canada, lists signs that matter for test prep, including "difficulty estimating how long it will take to do something". A written countdown like the table above takes the estimating off the child.

Alloprof, which offers its academic help free of charge to Quebec students and their parents, suggests studying "in short bursts (around 30 minutes each)" and starting several days before a major exam. That is practical advice, not research. A school can arrange measures such as extra time on exams, and CADDAC says "Accommodations must be individualized." Our guide to ADHD and schoolwork in Canada covers accommodations and the school plan.

What helps with test anxiety?

A 2018 meta-analysis by von der Embse, Jester, Roy and Post combined 238 studies published since 1988 and found test anxiety linked to lower scores, strongest in the middle grades, with an effect "in the small to moderate range".

Ramirez and Beilock (2011) tested one fix: "a brief expressive writing assignment that occurred immediately before taking an important test" improved scores, "especially for students habitually anxious about test taking." The child writes about the worry, then sits the test. That is one paper, and its abstract gives no grade levels, so treat it as worth trying rather than proven. For worry about numbers, see our piece on math anxiety in children.

How long should a child study each night?

There is no Ontario-wide rule, and boards differ. York Region's homework procedure, #320.1, last revised in November 2025, gives maximums from 0 to 20 minutes in Grades 1 to 3 up to 0 to 90 minutes in Grades 10 to 12, "not meant to be an average or expected daily amount." Toronto's policy, revised in 2008, says one hour or less in Grades 7 and 8 and two hours or less in Grades 9 to 12.

The "10-minute rule", 10 minutes of homework per grade, is a US rule of thumb and is not Ontario policy. Harris Cooper of Duke University found that for upper high school students "after about two hours' worth, more homework was not associated with higher achievement." No source this guide found gives a best session length for children, so judge the session by the practice quiz rather than the clock. For help with homework itself, see our guide to homework help in Canada.

Where a certified teacher fits

A parent can run practice testing and spacing at home with flashcards and a calendar. Writing good practice questions for a Grade 10 science unit is harder, and so is reading what a comment about Knowledge and Understanding asks for. A teacher certified in Ontario works with the achievement chart and learning skills as part of the job, so a plan built with one can start from the report card.

Genie works only with Canadian Certified Teachers, licensed by a provincial governing body such as the Ontario College of Teachers. Its How it works page says "every teacher is provincially certified, and that is checked before their profile goes live", and that "lessons run 1-on-1 online around the course your child is already taking at school". Parents get a per-lesson record of what was covered and what the child understood. Genie's pages do not describe a set test-preparation method, so this guide claims none.