学校生活

This week students prepared for the digital SAT. The SAT is a standardized college admissions exam that uses adaptive testing to measure a person`s reasoning skills, predicting how well they will do in college. The exam features a reading and writing section followed by a math section. A strong score can help students appear more competitive during their university admissions process.

In the reading and writing portion of the SAT class we began by downloading Bluebook. Since students will be using this application to take the test it was important for them to become more comfortable with its interface ahead of time. Students also took a practice test focusing only on the two reading and writing modules. Unlike the test they were not timed and instead encouraged to note any questions or vocabulary that was particularly difficult.

For the next three days, we broke down the most common Reading and Writing question types: main idea questions, purpose questions, claim questions, conclusion questions, dual text questions, and chart-based questions. We also spent the first few minutes of every class building vocabulary.
On the second day, we focused on main idea and purpose questions. Students reviewed how to identify the main idea of an SAT-level passage, then practiced answering example questions that asked about the central point of a text. In the second lesson that day, students learned strategies for purpose questions. We divided these into three subtypes:
● Purpose: identifying the author’s main reason for writing the passage as a whole
● Function: understanding the role of a specific underlined sentence
● Structure: determining how the passage is organized by identifying its two main ideas
We reviewed how to answer each subtype using example texts, and then students had time to practice independently.

On the third day, students focused on claim and conclusion questions. For claim questions, their main task was to match evidence to an underlined claim. As a class, we practiced breaking each claim into its core components and then checking the answer choices for evidence that supported both parts of the claim. After this review, students practiced on their own. We also worked on conclusion questions, in which students must choose the most logical conclusion to a passage based on the author’s claim and the supporting details. Students answered conclusion questions online and wrote a brief explanation for each answer choice they selected.
On the fourth day, we turned to dual text and chart-based questions. For dual texts, students practiced reading two short passages and then identifying either a key similarity between them or how one author might respond to the other. Our earlier work on main ideas and claims helped students break down the central ideas in both texts and select the best answers. Finally, students learned how to interpret charts, graphs, and bullet-point notes in order to answer related SAT questions accurately.
On the final day of the SAT class, students took a full-length practice SAT under realistic conditions. This time, they were timed for each section of the exam, mirroring the actual test experience. Afterward, they reviewed their answers and used what they learned to create a personalized SAT study plan tailored to their individual needs and goals.