Sue in St. Pete

[littlemommy]

Hi, I was wondering if you can tell me how your children prepared for the ACT exam.  I feel that the ACT may be a better test for ds to take instead of the SAT.  When your children took the PSAT, did you prep them for the exams?  Thanks.

[Sunshine State Sue]

Gosh.  I am not sure why you are singling me out.  :blushing: There are other parents here that have had more success with prep.

 

Ds took the ACT at the end of 9th grade, 10th grade, and at the start of 12th grade.

 

In 9th grade, he did no prep.  He took the test without writing.  We paid extra to get the test book back so that we could use (and his errors) to prep for next time around.  I think that is extremely helpful.

 

In 10th grade, I had him work with a writing tutor once a week for 6 weeks prior.  Writing is a weakness.  The tutor also shared some general tips with him.  We worked through the previous year's wrong answers.  I tried to get ds to work with an ACT book from the library, but he was fairly resistant.  2 things I think contributed to his scores on English/Reading:  (1) Analytical Grammar, (2) Critical Reading and Thinking at CC.  Especially the latter.  From what I saw of the text, it looked like an entire semester of ACT English/Reading prep.  Again, I paid extra to get the test book.

 

I would have liked ds to take it again at the end of 11th grade, but we figured his scores were high enough for wherever he wanted to go.

 

In 12th grade, ds was a little more motivated because we thought he was going to be applying to some very expensive and competitive schools (ie. it would be better to be in the upper 25% and not the middle 50%), so he was willing to work some with an ACT book someone gave us.  He did work through them a bit, but honestly not that much.  He wound up not applying to any of those schools, but the increase in the score was nice anyway.

 

I was able to get ds to take the PSAT in 10th and 11th grade.  It comes with a test prep book.  I may have been able to get him to work through it.  I do remember that we sat down one day and both did a math portion of the SAT (or PSAT maybe because he never took the SAT).  It was amusing to compare our scores.  With 20/20 hindsight, I would have skipped the PSAT.  He never even got close to NM.  But, we had to give it a try I guess.

 

A little about his math scores.  Math is his strongest subject.  We used Foerster's Algebra in 8th grade, and I highly recommend it.  However, he never did as well on the math sections as I expected.  His overall math score actually went down 1pt between 9th and 10th grade.  I am not sure if he had forgotten the material or what.  He started at CC in 10th grade with Intermediate Algebra.

 

Sorry I am not more help.  I am happy to share the gory details of the numbers privately if you would like to see.  Just send me a PM with your email address.

 

Here is one thread on ACT prep.  If you click on the tag, you will find more ACT threads.

 

HTH!

[littlemommy]

Thanks so much! You're a great help!