We went over the various strategies for the vocabulary and reading comprehension questions. Preston is a solid reader, but needs to focus on every word in the answers as they are quite literal. He's getting much better at using process of elimination, and we'll continue to work on it tomorrow.
Jesse should be in pretty solid shape for the test on Saturday. We split today's session between grammar and reading comprehension. He has improved in both areas, but still needs to spend more time memorizing the rules of grammar. This will cut down on his guessing and the time it takes him to work through a section. He did some solid work in reading comprehension and has gotten much better at paying attention to the details and the specific word choices in the answers.
We continued working on the grammar section today. We went through the three different types of questions and discussed strategies for how to approach each. Preston needs to focus on learning the rules better. He answers too many based on sound or feel, which will get him in trouble with the SAT. The better he knows the rules, but better he will be able to spot the issues.
We completed going over the rules of grammar for the tests and started working on some of the practice drills. Preston understands the rules pretty well, but he needs to work on how to apply them. He should improve with practice.
Preston had a good first day. We started by going over the two tests and how they are different. We then jumped right into the rules of grammar. Preston was focused and did a great job taking notes from the session. We'll continue with grammar next time.
The reading comprehension section is going to be very tough for John as he is not a fast reader. He needs to improve his skim reading or he's going to have a lot of trouble finishing the section. We went over how to prioritize the order of questions, and using them to direct the reading of the passage. This is not an easy process and John needs to practice between now and the test.
1) Sammie takes a 20 minute practice ACT writing section and we discussed the answers (pgs. 225-251 in the Barrons 2012 Practice Book). Overall, Sammie should work on parallel structures, tackling longer questions as opposed to skipping them, and recognizing shifts in ideas. We will continue to work on these aspects in the weeks to come.
1) Sammie and I went through ACT writing Practice questions (Barrons 225-251), discussing the grammar rules of parallelism, present perfect tenses, concision, and redundancy.
Matt has done a great job so far with the grammar, but still needs to get the rules down cold. He's having trouble easily identifying the issues and consequently is losing time. But he's clearly been working hard and I am confident he'll be in good shape come test time.
