(After I posted this, BK Smith sent me this article from The Washington Post talking about schools using peppermint)

I’ve written before about how at our school we generally do very little specific test-preparation with our students and, instead, feel that if we focus on preparing them to be life-long learners during the year they’ll do okay on the tests.

But these state tests are pretty high-stakes, so though we certainly don’t “teach to the test,” I do a half-hour lesson on test-taking strategies and we try to maximize student comfort level on test days. I’ve also written about an idea from Malcolm Gladwell that I’m considering trying.

I’ve generally brought fruit juice and a snack like pretzels for students to eat and drink during test breaks on those days. However, I haven’t really found much research identifying the best kinds of snacks for kids to eat during those times.

Do you know of any related-research? What do you give to your students — if anything?

ADDENDUM: Cinnamon Boosts Learning Ability is from Psy Blog and Cinnamon may aid learning ability is from Science Daily. I’ve previously written about research on peppermint supposedly doing something similar. I always have cinnamon flavored Graham crackers in my classroom for students because those are usually the least expensive at Costco, but maybe they’ve had another benefit, too?