Haley and I discussed her second draft of her college essay. It was an improvement. We are working on wordiness and the organization of Haley's essay. She is working on draft 3 now. It's looking good.

Haley and I tackled some reading comprehension passages as well as some last minute English passages. I am extremely confident that Haley will do well on this test. I am pleased with her progress and the work that she has put in. I have seen much growth in the last couple of months. We are also working on Haley's college essay. She has already done Revision One. We did not discuss the essay today because the SAT is tomorrow and we chose to focus on that. Good Luck, Haley!

Haley and I reviewed her college essay. She sent it it me, I read it and commented all over it, and scanned and sent it back to her. I gave her advice working wordiness, creating a more personal tone, and adding "Show Don't Tell" and other descriptive writing techniques. I sent Haley samples of recent college essays from Johns Hopkins that admissions officers deem successful. Haley and I then moved on to SAT prep. We tackled English grammar and reading comprehension today.

Haley and I tackled another set of reading comprehension passages. We are flying through the Princeton Review book! :) I believe that Haley is getting stronger. I am also looking at Haley's college essay. I will make some comments over the weekend to discuss with her. From what I see, we need to work on wordiness and repetition of ideas, and add some more descriptive techniques, such as "show don't tell, powerful adjectives, action verbs, dialogue, and characterization of Haley.

Haley and I completed three reading comprehension passages with discussion of incorrect answers and concepts. Haley does better on the nonfiction (science and history) passages than the narrative ones. The questions that require implications about characterization and character or author purpose tend to stump her. We were also able to complete some English grammar exercises. Haley is very strong in this area.

Haley and I facetimed today in between her rowing classes. Our goal was to thoroughly complete 3 entire reading passages with discussion and reflection. We obtained this goal. I believe that the more passages we read, the better. I may start timing her next week. We will meet on Wednesday and Thursday next week at 1:00 pm. I encouraged Haley to review the vocabulary packet that I sent her and to read as much as possible in her leisure time (news articles, non-fiction pieces, etc.) so that she becomes quicker.

Haley and I discussed her previous experience taking the SAT. She received a 610 in English and would like to raise her score. The next (and hopefully her final) SAT test will be August 25th. We discussed her strengths and weaknesses and some strategies that she can use to raise her score. I sent Haley some resources for Vocabulary and some test-taking strategies. We completed some practice tests for both the reading comprehension and English portions of the SAT. We are both using the Princeton Review SAT 2019 Book. We discussed answers that Haley got wrong and why.

We did several practice problems with different concepts on the SAT.

Over a number of drills, Haley worked on using the techniques we have reviewed while building her endurance for the test.

Today Haley and I went spent concentrated time in the reading section. We reviewed the question types thoroughly and discussed how to eliminate effectively. Next, Haley practiced drills in the the Writing & Language section, and lastly Haley and I read through an SAT essay prompt and discussed how to approach analyzing it for its use of rhetoric. Haley then wrote a quick draft which I critiqued as well.