Crystal didn't do her homework this week. She wasn't very responsive to listening and talking today. Because of this, I had her complete some Writing and Reading questions on her own and we checked her answers as she went along. She did write down some important grammar rules that she should remember. For example, when comparing things, you must compare apples to apples; you cannot compare an apple to an orange or to a pear. Crystal must continue to look at the text when she is answering reading questions and not make assumptions. Sometimes she jumps to an answer before she has really spent time evaluating what the text is saying.

Crystal and I checked her homework, which she did very well on. However, she didn't get a chance to review her vocabulary. She needs to put more time into her vocabulary study every week. We worked on reading passages, sentence completions, and writing. Crystal has a great sense of grammar and great instincts with the reading passages. I reminded her that for sentence completions, she should only guess if she can eliminate some of the answers. If she's unable to eliminate, she should leave the question blank. We also looked at an essay she had written several weeks ago for Kevin. I told Crystal that she must continue to reference her thesis and show how her examples prove her thesis. She should also simplify her thoughts in her writing and she should not assume that the reader knows what she is talking about. This should help to clarify and streamline her writing.

N/A

We worked through Section 8 of Practice Test 2 and then went over those problems that Crystal worked incorrectly. We cleared all issues.

review grammar/reading

Today we had our last session and focused on reviewing the material we've covered and talked about tips for preparing and taking the test. Crystal should be in good shape if she focuses on working the practice tests.

Although the SAT is a difficult test, Crystal is a bright young lady and is capable of doing quite well on it. Her reading and verbal skills are particularly strong. We worked on some short reading passages so that I could get a sense of the work she's been doing with Kevin. I had her read the questions first and then go to the passages. After reading the passages, I had her tell me the main idea of each passage. This is a good practice to get in to, because all of the correct answers will support the main idea. She has great instincts and knows to eliminate before jumping to the correct answer. I also taught her that answers that are overly strong or judgmental will never be right on the SAT; those are the first answer choices that she should eliminate. We looked at some vocabulary and sentence completions. Crystal has no problem putting her own words in the blanks, but she needs to work on her vocabulary. She should be diligent about learning all of the new words that we discuss. For homework this week, she will learn a list of vocabulary. We ended the session by looking at a couple of grammar questions, and we reviewed adverbs and subjective/objective pronouns. We will put most of our focus next week into grammar review.

We competed going over the last three problems of Section 5 of Practice Test 2 and then went on to Section 6.

essay

Today we worked on how to write the essay for the SAT. We started off with pre-writing and how to develop ideas for the introduction. I gave Crystal the basic format for the essay, and general topic sentences and thesis statement. Crystal is a very strong writer, but the pacing is going to be a problem for her. She wrote a practice essay, which was excellent, but needed more time than the 25 minutes. With practice, she should be able to score well on the test.

We worked most of the way through Section 5, Practice Test 2 (14 of 18 problems).

We sprint the first half of the session reviewing algebra using the new SAT text as a guide. We spent the second have completing Section 3 of Practice Test 3 (25 minutes.)