mtomom Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 (edited) My middle schooler hasn't done any standardized testing. When should I start preparing for the PSAT (or SAT) and ACT? Are there good ways to do this in middle school? Edited January 8, 2017 by mtomom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OlgaLA Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Unless you are planning them to take one of the tests soon, I wouldn't do anything. If you are really worried, you can do a practice test at home, but keep in mind that the kids improve a lot at this age just by covering more math and reading more books. I think averages come to 50 - 100 points per year, and it might be per subject. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucy the Valiant Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Prep her by laying the foundation that these tests are "games" that matter - they do NOT in any way, shape, or form define who the student is as a person, but they do matter for people (organizations) who can only understand numbers. Has she taken any kind of bubble-test at all, ever? If not, there's no harm (at least in my mind / for my own kids) in doing an annual year-end test, just to establish the normalcy of it; you don't have to share scores with anyone at all. (In our house, we test annually, and they are "ice cream tests" - you do your best, chuckle with mom after the test at the "weird" questions, and everybody gets ice cream to celebrate the year's end & doing your best. Nobody (except mom) has ever cared about the scores, which (of course) come months later; we've done this for several years now. My personal favorite part are the "weird" questions the kids choose to share with me.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucy the Valiant Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 (Also, if there *IS* any testing anxiety, you could show her some of the questions that she DOES ALREADY know how to do - that is calming for a lot of kids who struggle with anxiety.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.... Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Eh....*thinking here* I've already started talking to them about it, explaining to them what it was and how there are 2 different tests (ACT and SAT) and what the differences are. We're not going to bother with the PSAT, I don't think. We are pretty set on just starting at community college, because I am fanatically anti-student loan debt. For part of their English this semester, I printed off a worksheet of SAT vocab questions and they worked through them. Then, I checked their answers and discussed them. They got a surprising number of them right. And now I'm not even sure if that was useful, because they just changed the SAT. I also signed up for the ACT Question of the Day - you put in your email address and they email you one practice question every day. So, I guess I can't say we haven't started any prep for it, but I don't really plan to do testing prep until the summer before. I told them the summer before they take the ACT or SAT, we're spending the whole summer preparing for it. And my kids are like yours - they've never taken a standardized test before, but when I give them practice questions, they actually get some correct! (Lol) So, I think by the time they reach that age, they'll be fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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