Limit the Main Idea to 3 – 4 Words! Always, always, always, generate a main idea before attacking the reading questions! Limit the main idea to 3 -4 words. This is difficult, but essential. It is easy to come up with the “gist” of the piece, but very difficult to limit yourself to a few words. The main idea is the point that the author is making. Once you get the point, you can get the questions!
When they’re born, you dream they’ll be a great scientist, take over the family business, or become the President of the United States. When they’re four, they dream they’ll be ballerinas, professional baseball players, or toy-store owners. By grade school the dreams morph into firefighters, policemen, doctors, and lawyers, and by high school, the dreams have matured: environmentalists, prosecutors, journalists, accountants, translators, engineers. Every parent dreams of what their child will become. And every child dreams of what he or she will become as a “grown-up.” And even though the dreams can be somewhat impractical (or altogether delusional), they still represent early goals and ambitions.
It is important that children keep these goals and ambitions throughout their academic careers. The goals may change from day to day, but being in school and working towards something is an important component in the long journey toward college.
Below are 5 tips to keeping students motivated and making their goals and ambitions a reality.
1. Go on College Tours! Starting as early as seventh grade, I recommend that you plan on visiting a college on all family vacations. Going to California? Pick the nearest campus, drive through, and point out the exciting features. Who cares that your son is only 12 years old – he’ll gain an appreciation for higher education at an early age. Driving up to Grandmas? Take the scenic route and show your middle-schooler a suburban college setting. See how he likes the atmosphere. Emphasizing college at an early age and exposing your child to different campuses, settings, and options will make the process that much easier come junior year. Plus, you can buy your twelve-year-old a school banner for his room, or a cool sweatshirt to wear to class. These school memorabilia will be ongoing motivators.At a young age, students often do not know what to look for in a school. We tell our children to “do well” in school, but college seems a long ways away and our children do not really recognize what they are striving for. The key is for your child to set his or her sights on something and then work to make this a reality. Without a long-distance goal, students often do not achieve to their potential. Every year I drive my eight-year-old around Dartmouth University. He tells all of his friends that this is where he will be attending college one day. Why? Because he loves the iceskating pond, sledding hill, and ski mountain. Obviously he does not have his priorities straight, but he told me that he will work extra hard this year to get a good math grade on his 4th grade report car, because he knows he must do well in math to get in to this top school!
2. Start creating a “game-plan” in 9th grade! Not only should you weave college tours into yearly vacations as a means of motivating your child, you should also sit down with your child yearly and discuss the “game-plan”. I recommend creating a game plan as early as 9th grade. Starting early reduces the scrambling that occurs second semester of junior year. Map out and discuss a timeline for each year of high school. Beginning in 9th grade, students should participate in at least ONE community service – even if it is just planting a tree on Arbor Day. Students should also be in a school club and be pursuing a hobby or interest. If your child does not have a hobby, find one! This does not mean that students should participate in a plethora of clubs, though. It is much better to participate in just one or two activities and to take on a leadership role within this organization/activity.
3. Keep a running resume from 8th grade on! It is easy to forget those accomplishments, awards, honors, Girl Scout badges, etc. that we’ve received years ago. Therefore, write everything down. If your child is staring at a blank piece of paper at the end of 9th grade, this is a clear indication that your child is not doing enough.
4. Take on a challenging curriculum! Grades and course load are the most important things in 10th and 11th grade. Students need to take challenging courses, even if this means a slightly lower GPA. Having a 4.0 but no A.P. classes is not nearly as impressive as having a 3.7 and four A.P. courses.
5. Map out the standardized test process! Of course standardized tests play a key role in the college section and admission process. But, standardized testing should not begin until the end of 10th grade. Once again, create a game plan. Have your child take a practice ACT and a practice SAT. Which is the better test (higher starting score)? Then, creating a testing calendar and studying timeframe. Remember, both course grades and test scores are important! Keep in mind when midterms and finals fall so that your child is not overwhelmed.
The key to memorization is repetition. The more you see a word, the more likely you’ll remember it. Therefore, play the VocabPrep game online for three minutes a day to increase you familiarity and memorization of 1000 top-ranked SAT words.
It is imperative that I take some time out of my day to tell all of you about Momster, a website I have recently become familiar with that caters towards parents with children of all ages. As an educator, but more importantly as a parent, a network of parenting resources is very important to me. Momster allows parents (moms, but also all parents) to talk about what is bothering them at any given time to what kind of school is best for their child. I can bet you our parents wish they had something like this raising us!
I have become involved with Momster’s efforts simply because I find it to be such a good idea. Formed with some of the brains from Family Circle, I know that it is going to be incredibly successful. I am going to be posting a follow up blog with a contest involving Momster, which will include three months of free test prep. Stay posted and enjoy these beautiful summer days!
Don’t let geometry trip you up on the SAT. Remember that geometric formulas are found on the test, so use them! Refer back to the formula page for triangle problems, circle diagrams, etc. Everything you need is given, so take advantage of it!
Don’t skip around the answer choices on the sentence completions. Attack A then B then C etc. Approach one side at a time. If you don’t know a word, go to the next choice. Only THINK at the end when you are left with two/three choices.
For more tips open up a demo account with Wilson Daily Prep and see the difference interactive prep makes!
Because the SAT test and ACT test happen only a few times a year and thankfully not on the same day, it is important to be aware of the looming registration dates, late deadlines, actual testing dates and dates when you can check your score. All of this is available at the College Board online. WilsonDailyPrep will help you prepare for those important dates. Upcoming SAT test dates and ACT test dates include the following:
IMPORTANT DATES
March 25:
May SAT registration deadline
April 10th:
ACT Administered
May 1:
SAT administered
Bad SAT Luck: Dealing with Disappointing Scores
For some people, March is a lucky month filled with pots of gold and four-leaf clovers. For others, it may be the month of dealing with disappointing SAT scores. A little advice from a pro: take a deep breath, push through, and try again.
The SAT test is a process. It is not a one or two-shot deal. And, there is a luck factor!
A majority of SAT performance is, of course, practice and preparation. But, as an SAT tutor I’m not ashamed to admit that there are some easier tests and some much harder tests (Yes, I’ve even missed a sentence completion or reading question!). If your child “bombs” the March test, do not give up. Rather, your child needs to get angry, get motivated, get over it, and try again.
First, there are many things outside of your child’s control that can drastically affect scores.
Students need to remember that this is a standardized test: it is predictable, patterned, and involves practice. Students should use their score reports to work on weak areas. Remember, students can take this test several times, so focus, fine tune, and improve.
Student must:
So a bad score may be chalked up to a bad day, a bad test, or any number of things. The key is to move on and focus on the next opportunity.
Time recently ran an article about how teens and parents are handling the need for SAT prep during a recession. For many years now parents have been willing to shell up more cash than they’d like to admit, just to have their child in private tutoring lessons for the SAT test. As a result, many people believed that the SAT exam was “easier” for wealthy kids because of the resources available to them. It seems that like most other industries, the recession has forced the SAT prep $4 billion industry to stop gouging prices and offer more reasonable prices. Could a recession bring the SAT test down to a more level playing field? We will have to wait and see on that one but we do know that SAT prep these days is centered around online programs with qualified tutors on-call to answer questions.
Is there an advantage or disadvantage to online tutoring? Some say that the reduction in face-to-face time will cause kids to feel less pressure to study and decreasing the amount of actual SAT prep. However, Laura Wilson, founder of WilsonDailyPrep, was able to capitalize on such a turn around. After years of teaching, Wilson concluded that even six minutes a day of SAT prep every day can be more effective than students spend a couple hours cramming for weekly tutoring sessions.
Although WilsonDailyPrep offers private and class tutoring, recently Wilson has launched her online tutoring session. WilsonDailyPrep’s online tutoring program sends six questions every day to each kid over email. Students are also encouraged to keep a stack of vocabulary words in the bathroom for short study sessions at any time. Parents are notified when a kid has not completed specific tasks online or is falling behind in his practie scores. WilsonDailyPrep even guarentees a 200 point increase on the student’s SAT score after just a few months of studying.
Westchester Magazine interviewed Laura Wilson about her very successful tutoring service known as WilsonDailyPrep. When asked for one of her best tricks, Laura mentioned the bathroom vocabulary. Laura Wilson makes unannounced house visits to check that students are keeping a pile of vocabulary words in their bathroom for 5-minute study sessions. She reports that approximately 80% of her students have followed through on this trick.
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