I need to give my nephew18, a written out plan for his summer SAT/PSAT plan.
My sister has purchased Erica Metlzer’s grammar and CR prep books as well as PWN math prep book.
He needs help more in CR and grammar. I don’t know how to break it down.
Does he just open grammar book and work till he has completed the book, then CR book, then Math book?
Is the summer enough time for all 3 books?
You shouldn’t try to write a plan for the whole summer up front. A good tutor mixes assessment (to understand strengths and weaknesses), remediation (teaching to fill in holes), and review each week.
A tutor is not affordable for this family.
PSAT scores:
Reading: 21
Writing/language 28
Math 28
@BingeWatcher do you have the PWN the SAT fourth edition? If so read pages 3-8 “how to use this book”
If he’s going into 11th grade next year I would have him spend X amount of time on Khan, and X sections from each book each day. With breaks in between Khan and each book.
Yes, you can get through all three books in the summer but it will take a lot of work. It is important to read every word and work every problem and not to just ‘skim’ through them.
Strongly agree with @AroundHere that you need to assess as you go and spend more time remediating weaker areas.
Taking full lengthen timed practice tests are very important!
Do you live in the same city as your nephew where you can check his work and come up with the next steps every week or two? Or are his parents capable of that?
A summer-long assignment list with no adjustments as progress is made (or not) is not particularly useful.
Here’s how I would do it.
Student takes an official practice test cold, no prep.
Score the test and use the resources in the back of the PWN / Meltzer books to target weak areas. Example: The PWN book has an index that tells you the category / thematic grouping for each question, so if I kid misses #32, you can see that it’s categorized as Translating Words to Math, Heart of Algebra and Data Interpretation II. Meltzer has something similar.
Tabulate wrong questions by category, so if there are 7 wrong in Heart of Algebra but only two wrong in Parabolas, and none in Data Interpretation I, the student knows where to focus their time.
Spend two weeks correcting the missed questions and prepping the weak areas, then do another official practice test. It is absolutely vital that the student understand not only why the answer they chose was wrong, but why the right answer is right.
Rinse, repeat, alternating between official practice tests (there are 8 SATs) and targeted prep. Use Khan Academy to supplement Meltzer and PWN. Also, PWN has a special access website which is free for those who purchased the book, so make sure the mom & kid know about it.
It may also be helpful to only prep Math, or only prep CRW during certain weeks, and if so, I’d do that in one week rotations, instead of two weeks, working with half of a test (2 sections) at a time.
Students often resist prepping their weakest areas. They absolutely MUST practice their weakest areas!
nephew 2018 and family live 6 hours from me. Thank you so much @DiotimaDM. I am sending my sister your post.
@3scoutsmom, like say 40mins a day on Kahn on say “Heart of Algebra” break 15 mins then that section from book? Same for reading and writing?
Do you two think Kahn is as good quality as the books are?
Sorry, nephew is not class of 18, he is in 10th grade right now. So class of 19
BTW, re: timed practice - I agree that it’s essential, but during early iterations, we simply marked where S was on the test when time was called, rather than having him stop and not complete those questions. Completing the questions is necessary for detecting content weaknesses, so early on, we worked on content and speed as separate items.
In the beginning, I think S was only ever two questions short in one of the math sections. Fixing content weaknesses also fixed any timing issues.
Content first, as you can see from his scores he has a lot of holes in content.
Also, is it realistic that he can greatly raise those scores to a level that will get merit?
He took a practice ACT at school, but I don’t know those scores. He said the ACT did not allow enough time.
Also the prepping he did was take an Untimed SAT sometime before the test.
And I see how timing follows content.
I don’t know your nephew’s attention span. You can ‘test out of’ skills you have already mastered on Khan. If this was my kid I’d have them do 30-45 reading khan and 30-45 math khan 4-5 days a week with breaks plus the three books you mentioned. We don’t do any other test prep on days they take full timed practice tests. For Khan I found that setting time worked better than x number of problems because otherwise they rushed through it.
For summer test prep for my boys, my rule of thumb is they can play the same number of hours of video games as they actually put into test prep each day. Works for us but my kids really want to prep as much as they want to play games;-)
Can I veer a little of topic? First I want to say I am sending my sister everything y’all write. And dear sister is working on her prereqs for RN school and is pretty clueless (and prefers to stay that way) about this.
Ok, d21 will take the PSAT in the fall. It will be good practice for her. I was thinking of having her go over untimed SAT for practice. She has already taken the PSAT 8/9 and new SAT.
But I don’t want to waste any precious released SAT as we will need them later.
I want to make sure she is scoring on track for potential NMF.
Waste a Released SAT or do nothing and just have her take it.
I just want her score accurately reflect her ability.
My D did full timed test once a month. Other than that, she did one section practice each day and go through the answers over the summer after sophomore year.
There is at least one official practice PSAT out there. Would that help?
Re: wasting released SATs - we re-used them, especially if separated by at least 4-6 weeks. The first one, done cold, is a prime candidate for later re-use, especially near the end, and so is any individual section where the student missed a lot and has since prepped and improved. Those are good confidence builders.
It’s useful, IMHO, to compare the two side by side. “OK, last time you took this, you missed 13 on math, combined, and this time, you only missed three. That’s great! However, two of the three you missed this time you got right last time, so let’s have a look at those. If you’d gotten those two right again, you’d have a 780 for this section.”
Re: can the student improve enough for good merit - I wouldn’t be comfortable guessing about that w/o greater knowledge of the student - grades, motivation, work ethic, native ability. They all matter, and to an extent, they can all compensate for each other to a certain degree.
I think CRW is the easiest to prep for. S said that there was a point where everything just clicked for him on CRW, and he could tell if a Reading Q was wrong just a few words into the prompt.
Other people say the math is easier to prep for because math is right or wrong, period. No shades of meaning, no “both answers could be right but this one is better.” I suspect that what’s easiest to prepare for may vary from student to student.
Just from the public library, we got 4 or 5 different SAT practice books and each one has a few practice tests. So my D went through all 20-30 of those practice tests including online ones in one summer.
Great suggestions! Thank you
I spent the last two days knee-deep in this process as well. I started with: (1) results of PSAT 10 and Pre ACT; (2) 2017-18 testing calendars for SAT, ACT, SAT subject tests, and AP tests; (3) school calendar; and (4) a suggestion from my daughter’s tutor that, given her junior year work load and the fact that she will have covered all the math on the test by the end of sophomore year, summer preparation with early testing in fall of Junior year might be the best for my daughter’s sanity. Unfortunately, the results for both tests yielded a “grey area/judgment call” on which test to focus on. See Compass Prep website on interpreting results from both tests.
Once I plotted out the test dates, it became apparent that my daughter had some major conflicts with the spring SAT test dates AND the non-conflicted SAT dates then ran up against her school trimester exams, as well as APs and SAT subject tests. Once I knew that, things started to fall into place. She’ll prep this summer for SAT (which, of course, helps with PSAT), with the goal of completing SAT testing by the end of 2017. At that point she’ll have 2-3 sets of SAT scores to play with and can decide then whether she needs to pivot to the ACT.
While I realize your post is about a different topic, I think it’s also helpful to consider timing of all this. Burnout is a real consideration, as well as the fact that the students are also balancing regular course loads as well as spring APs and SAT subject tests. The overall goal was to come up with a schedule that allowed for testing every two months (and maybe not even in the spring).