Supporting Mental Health at Home
This past year has been stressful for all of us, especially high school students. If you’re not sure how hard the COVID era has hit teens, just ask your school counselor how much social and emotional distress increased starting in the spring of 2020. Our support networks and coping strategies have had to adjust to account for social distancing and distance learning. During this current health crisis, mental health needs to be treated with the same urgency as physical health among adolescents: 50% of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14 and 75% by age 24. Teens need healthy outlets for stress so they can grow into resilient adults. New York State Mental Health Resources and Training Center shares essential information, current practices, and guidance on mental health from the NYS Education Department. Here are some valuable tips for families: Talk openly about mental health. When we…
Be Calculator Smart on Test Day
Your graphing calculators are powerful tools, but do you know how to use them effectively on the SAT and the ACT? This summer, I participated in a teacher training with Texas Instruments on the use of the TI-Nspire on the ACT. Most of my fellow participants were classroom teachers. Many of these teachers said that they personally do not teach their students the full use of their calculators, because the teachers want their students to master the math on their own. While this reasoning is understandable for classroom teachers, it can harm their students on the tests. Students need to know the most effective ways of using their calculator to get their best scores on the SAT Calculator Math and ACT Math sections. You can use these skills on the TI-Nspire to maximize your time. Something as simple as getting an answer in the right form for the test can…
The Problem With The Official Beginner’s Guide for the ACT
As a professional test prep tutor, reviewing all the official materials from the publishers of the ACT and the SAT is a critical part of my job. I was excited to review the newly released book, The Official Beginner’s Guide for the ACT 2020-2021, from Wiley the publishers of the ACT. Unfortunately, this book is not worth the price for either students new to the ACT or veteran test takers. The Beginner’s Guide provides a condensed version of the ACT format description and general test-taking tips contained in The Official Guide to the ACT. It lacks in-depth information about each section and example problems that the previously published book contains. The Beginner’s Guide does provide an additional full-length ACT practice test (April 2018) not available in The Official Guide and makes this practice test available in an online format via a code when you register on their website. To be…
Subtle Changes to the ACT
The SAT with all of its profound changes has attracted the most attention from students, parents, and even the media. But that other college admissions test, the ACT, has also evolved with the times, even as the test maker has kept these more subtle changes quiet. How has the ACT changed over the last year? ENGLISH There has been no change in format to the English section, though there is more of a focus on punctuation. In addition, more questions ask about thesis and author’s intent in the passages. MATHEMATICS We haven’t seen any big changes in the Math section, but we have found certain advanced topics, mostly Algebra 2, that appear intermittently. Test takers seeking top scores in the Math section should know these topics well. READING Following the lead set by the SAT long ago, the ACT Reading section finally features paired passages. The Reading section still orders…