Does Vocabulary Matter Anymore on the SAT & ACT?
At first glance, both the SAT and the ACT seem to have eradicated all of their vocabulary questions. Gone are the SAT questions where you had to choose the most fitting word for the blank in the sentence, and long gone are the old “analogy” questions of my SAT days. (ANALOGIES : SAT :: DODO BIRD : WORLD.) Do students need to bother with vocabulary at all, anymore? YES. Just because the obvious vocabulary questions are gone doesn’t mean that a strong college-bound vocabulary isn’t still helpful. There are still many challenging vocabulary words throughout the tests; the difference is that now the tests are more likely testing your ability to know how a word is being used in context. For example, more and more passages on the Reading section of the tests are coming from older texts from the 1800’s or 1700’s. These older texts often involve a lot…
Strategic Laziness: Putting Downtime on Your Calendar
Now that another school year has ended and both students and teachers are looking forward to a much-needed summertime break, the time has come to praise the productive side of “downtime.” Do you ever look at your scribbled-over calendar days, resting your eyes with relief on an upcoming “blank” day when nothing is planned? You are not alone. Our busy world tends to valorize constant activity, but the truth is that taking breaks and having strategic downtime is crucial to doing your best work. Even the Harvard Business Review acknowledges The Upside of Downtime. What is downtime? For most students, the grinding schedule of weekday school hours suddenly melts away in the summer, and the student gains control of his or her time. Jobs, camps, trips, and summer sports begin to provide some structure to the upcoming days, but overall most students have more power to design their own days…
Working Playfully: How to Ace your Biggest Exams
“Play-based learning” is a term most often associated with early childhood programs and preschool teaching philosophies, but high school students can also benefit from adding some playful dimensions to the way they tackle the whirlwind of exams at the end of the school year. This time of year, many students are feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. A return to play-based learning can keep students fresh and engaged as they tackle large quantities of material. You may ask, naturally, how this playfulness might happen. Isn’t doing work the opposite of playing? When you are studying for an upcoming exam, think of how you feel when you realize you have worked for several hours, but still have a lot of material to review and learn. You may be losing energy and focus, dreading having to keep plowing through the material or taking yet another practice test to review. One way to keep yourself…