Issue #11

I've oftened been asked will I create Test Prep Math level 4. The answer is that level 4 is the SAT.
Issue #11

This issue explains the important part of test prep - actually doing it correctly.

From the Editor
Issue #11 means business

The SAT is characterized by an average level of topical content presented within a framework of extremely challenging complexity. In other words, it's mostly all thinking. The standard approach to studying for the SAT is a list of things to remember and things to do; in other words, remove all of the thinking. What is wrong with this picture?

In this issue I'm going to present the conceptual approach we use to test prep. This approach involves a very small time commitment and a few problems each day. There is no free lunch here - the extrutiatingly torturous nature of this approach is that the child has to work hard, expend mental effort and rely on himself. Solutions are forbidden. It's walking out on a tight rope without a net.

Time for a rest

Time off is an important part of not having a burn out kid...

Time for a rest

The school year faded away early and I let it. There is nothing better than bordom to spark motivation and innovation. We took a solid 3 months off at the end of the year from everything except for low impact Zoom classes and pass-fail grading.

My definition of taking time off involves a lot of physcial activity. 'Time off' also involves studying this year, because the little one has a high impact high school entrance exam in the spring and now is the time to go into high gear.

Summer activities

Ground rules never change. Ground rules apply to every day of the year except for birthday and Christmas. I list the things that need to be done each day, with more chores on the weekend, and until completed, no fun. Fun means getting online with one's friends, and therefore these kids are highly movated. During the school week homework precludes extra math after 4th grade, so summers become especially important to academic advancement.

We started music lessons for the first time ever for lack of anything else to do. Once a week both my kids sit in front of their computers with their instruments and instructor and working from home is that much harder. 1 hour down, 167 left to go.

Each child has about 1 hour of exercize to do each day, which they often exceed. I don't care if it's bike, run, or walk really fast, lifting weights, ab crunchers. The little one walked a 6 mile round trip to pick up a Zelda cartridge. Reading is always mandatory, but much much harder with a teen who is constantly interrupted by high priority urgent texts from his friends every 12 seconds. We went camping 3 times (tip, go before June 10 because it gets really hot after that.) Painted an entire room, cleaned all the windows outside and in, did landscaping, fixed bikes, found a gaming chair in the alley and replafced the hardware, threw out a dumpster full of unused items, rearranged the furniture, shampooed the basement rug, cleaned the grout, did some rewiring, spent 9 hours assembling an Ikea desk, removed poison ivy, swept the garage, took apart and redisgned the loft bed, turned the back room into an Office Game Room Internet Cafe. Some of these tasks have been on my todo list for 10 years. Uninterrupted cognitive skills training have produced kids who are capabible of any adult level chore. I assign 2-8 hours of chores on the weekend.

Test prep

The focus this summer is to get ready for next year's MAP test. This is an untimed test of 50 math and 50 reading comp questions that determines whether or not a student in Chicago can go to one of the top high schools. My son's school of choice requires a perfect score and straight A's, but my school of choice for him has a bigger freshman class and thus requires a lower score and a maximum of one B. He gets to decide, and I don't care which of us gets our first choice.

The students spend between 5 and 6 hours on each test for a total of about 10 to 12 hours. Each question answered correctly results in a harder question. Top scorers get to about Junior year in high school by the end of the test. No one has reported derivates or integrals on the test yet. Maybe we'll be the first to see integrals.

The only activity that we are doing to prepare is SAT practice. The MAP test is in May and hopefully we'll sit for the actual SAT in April.

To reiterate the most important point of all, we're using the SAT, a timed test, to prepare for the MAP, an untimed test. The SAT is an aptituted test, to show you can apply thinking skills to material you supposedly learned or masters. The MAP test is an mix of questions to demonstrate you can apply those same skills to material you might not have seen before at a level you're not expected to see again for 6 years.

The actual SAT

Parents are not allowed in the building before, during or after the test. Last time the security guard noticed that my son was a foot shorter than the other kids and allowed me to drop him off at the end of the registration desk before I was kicked out.

There were thirteen 7th graders sitting for the exam and they were put in a special room so as to not freak out the juniors who are under enough stress without having to sit next to a 12 year old. The younglings take the full SAT and are then subjected to a "special" section. All questions and answers are available online in about 4 weeks except for the special section. My son reported that this mystery section was more cognitve and less aptitude in nature. I'll learn more next time from the kid who memorizes tests and talks way too much.

A 4 1/2 hour high school test is a pretty good prep experience for the MAP test, which has high school level material but only 40% of the questions. The PSAT is administered Freshman year for practice and sophomore year for real, but it is only 2 1/2 hours. Can you imagine zero pressure taking one of these tests because you've already done the real thing and can say 'This is not my first rodeo?'

Reviewing questions and answers from the test is fun. If I were to graph the performance, it would be a strong uphill climb followed by tumbling down the other side for lack of academic stamina. We'll see how the next one does.

The payoff

When I picked my son up last time, he walked out of the testing center appearing one foot taller. I think he had some imaginary facial hair. He was really proud of himself and his hard earned confidence was a giant war weary golem with large axes in each hand. If I got him an job and an apartement, I think he would have been fine on his own.

It was also great preparation for the MAP test.

Core curriculum

There is very little useful material on the SAT available...

Core curriculum

I've reviewed 2 of the top 4 SAT books at least 2 times each. I'm now working on the other 2. Sometimes I read tests and the material, but mainly I spend about 30 minutes a day discussing 5 math problems and an 10 questions from a reading passage. This is what I mean by 'reviewed'.

Official study sites, blogs, pay for tutoring content, and the forums are a different story. There are plenty of smart people with opinions on this topic, but not one who I think really gets it. I have yet to find an accurate article that I think is insightful or useful. They are more like fad diets than a serious exercise program.

Overview of the material

The material differs along two dimensions. In math, authors may present advanced or more complicated topics. Advanced for a 6th grader means basic trig. Advanced means a more complicated solution algorithm is required like finding the zeros of a quadratic. The practice test writers will make a complicated question convoluted by twisting the language and the presentation logic. I have a special place in my heart for unnecessarily complicated questions because it motivates real thinking and reminds me of my normal day at work.

Most of the practice tests in most of the books adhere to the "SAT Way". Every question must encourage mistakes. For example, -5(x-3) is harder than 5(x-3) is harder than 5(x+3) because kids under time pressure mess up negatives and parentheses. Really tedious time consuming questions may have an obvious answer or can be solved easier by estimation. The question should appear to ask for something obvious when in fact it is asking for something subtle, and if it's a multistep problem, the answer to an intermediate step can be found on the picklist, as will each common wrong answer.

For reading comp, the questions are challenging but doable if a child reads a passage with interest and concentration and forms opinions as he goes. No child I know does this. Therefore I judge the difficulty of each book by how many times we have to reread the passage to find the answer because the answer is tricky versus because we lack the maturity to understand the topic. The College Board passages are generally acceptable topics for six grade like government and science; the other books get into angst and romance and politics.

The reading comp questions suffer from unfamiliar vocabulary, unnecessarily complicated answers, misdirection on line numbers, and two types of questions that aren't in the passage. The first type is an implication based on evidence. The second type is an implication that is not based on any evidence and would take a 2 hour discussion to resolve. Barron's likes both techniques. One question type presents 4 totally wrong answers (pick the least worst one). My favorite question type of all is the question that is not supported by the passage with 4 incorrect answers.

If you want a comprehensive list of traps that the SAT has set for the student, in either subject, simply look at the 3 incrorrect answer choices and ask "what mistake would I make to get this answer?". My easy versus difficult rating comes down to advanced material or vocabulary, and comlicated versus convuluted questions; the traps are present in all books

You don't want a complrehensive list. You want a list of only those traps and techniques that result in incorrect answers for your student, and the way to find those is to get questions wrong and spend some time asking why. If I sat in a stone hut on one of those islands off of the Irish coast featured in Star Wars and I had a 4 foot long beard, and you came to me seeking advice on the SAT, this is all I would tell you.

My current ranking

The College Board tests are free on the website, thorough in their content and a good place to start. They don't want to put off any potential revenue streams by making it too hard but it is fair and accuate. Barrons is clearly the most demanding and the most challenging. Sylvan is a nicer version on Barrons - effective without as much pain. Princton starts easy; we;re on test #2 and it's getting harder quickly. Barron's does not start out easy.

My final ranking in terms of difficulty is College Board, Princeton, Sylvan, Barrons. Which one is the best for a time constrained high school student depends on their background, ability level, goals, cognitive skills and deadline. For a student who knows how to study and does not need remedial practice in topical areas, I recommend College Board followed by Barrons. For those without the discipline to put in the right kind of effort, any of these books will be equally useless. For an 11 or 12 year old, College Board and Sylvan to be followed by Barrons and Princeton. I mayove Princeton in my ranking after we complete this book.

High impact prep

Taking on the SAT at age 12 is like walking in knee deep mud...

High impact prep

The goal of studying for the SAT is to improve your score so you can get into a better college. The general consensus is a list of tricks that will magically add 50 points to the final score. Adding these 50 points is a valuable use of time and effort.

I'm looking for 300 to 400 extra points on the final score by making my child 1 or 2 standard deviations more cognatively capable than he currently is. I'm looking for the kind of cognitive skills that make an A in both Orgo and Chem E during the same semester a foregone conclusion.

How to study

Last year's original plan was to publish monthly breakdowns of SAT questions while I discover the secrets. A few weeks later I realized I was finished. I perused forums and SAT tutor services and the 'experts' and realized I was probably the only one who knew. I spent 6 months thinking I should keep this to myself for a personal edge and 6 months really worried about the economy. After much contemplation, I've come to the concusion that my advice is going to be as popular as recommending you adopt the style of the Amish and just as doable.

Each day we do 5 or 6 math problems and a single reading comprehension passage. Then we go through each question outloud without the solutions to argue the answer and argue the question and what is the best way to solve it and how to check the work so that you know it's correct.

For every question on the test, you have to answer these questions during test prep:

  • How do you know you are right so you can move on? Can you estimate, apply logic, recalculate, check against something else, answer has to be negative, can't be outside of some range because of the diagram, must add to 180? How?
  • Is there a better way to do solve it, like just looking at the question and applying some logic from somewhere else?
  • What technique is the author applying to make this question really hard, like what does 'vague' mean in lines 15-20 but you really have to look at line 18 or is it in the small print at the beginning of the passage that you just skipped over?
  • Most importantly of all, and where 90% of the learning takes place for those who don't spend enough time reading the question, why did you get it wrong? (Those students who are really good at pondering a question experience 50% of the learning with each question and 40% of the learning investigating mistakes.)
  • What did this take so long? What problem, question, equation or whatever took the time? Please refer to bullet #2.
  • Is it just a knowledge gap? Sometimes we need to take a detour to learn a new topic like complex numbers, some vocab, or philosophy and debate.

The answer to the question 'How do I improve my score?' is in those bullets above and varies for every person. For example, one student might do an adequate job of reading the nuances of a question but not spend enough time thinking about how to answer before beginning the work. In both the the question and solution strategy, the test has placed traps that one student is immune to but thwarts another. For example, my student isn't confused by 'which answer is not correct' whereas I always miss the 'not' when I'm grading.

Throw away the list and solutions

The goal, the effort, the motivation is simply to spend a lot of time answering a single question and learning about what it took to answer that question. It's like a puzzle or mystery, not just the answer but why it's hard to begin with and how to make it easier.

As you know, our competitive students that we push into abbreviated advanced courses that require tutoring and outside work don't really have the luxury of taking time to enjoy learning, let alone learn. It's being able to say that your child is in advanced AP whatever at a young age and gets 100's and will get into a great college.

To give this child the SAT question technique list is like handing them Clift notes (pun intended) so they can avoid reading the book. It's one more exercise in memorization and mindless application. To give a child the solutions - ever - is sending the opposite message about our goals. They should be sure that they are correct based on their own competency. The mind shuts down once it sees the answer - whether the child got the answer correct or not. Cognitive skills are created during thinking, not during answer checking.

When my child answers B, and I say 'You got this question wrong', real learning begins. Sometimes the answer is in fact B, and I'm wrong - but real learning begins nonetheless and sometimes this is the highest octane overdrive learning of all. If my child answers B, and I say that the answer is C, he simply looks at the content to determine why it's C and not B, adds a few molecules of useless knowledge to the flushable area of memory, and is finished thinking.

What is this learning?

The first level of learning fits under the heading 'I make mistakes and am not capable.' This is a solid cognitive skill that characterizes really successful people. I read the quest too fast, I missed the nuances of that word, the double meaning, the 3rd sentence in paragraph 4, the fraction, the negative sign, 5 + 6 does not equal 12. I like to think of this as 'I don't trust myself'. Once the child internalizes this lesson he's on his way to flawless performance - if you don't count the 17 prior attempts to get there. 5 questions a day are enough. More than that and you risk having your child practice his way around this skill and not learn it.

The term cognitive skills refers to a bucket of mental resourses that answers the quetions, "How do I do something that I am incapable of doing?". Cognitive skills are most powerful when the "something" is poorly defined or not defined at all, like fixing a washing machine or trying to solve a problem that doesn't make any sense to begin with. Cognitive skills address the long list of reasons why the child cannot in fact succeed, or will likely fail on repeated attempts. The second level of learning is that they magically learn these skills because every day they are exposed to activities that require them. It doesn't hurt that the skill domain of the SAT is exactly the same skill set needed to excel in academic work.

There is a considerable amount of material on the SAT that a 5-7th grader does not in fact know, so we benefit from learning content. I say 'learning' and 'not being told' becuase, in the spirit of the previous paragraph, we take concepts apart and put them back together with the help of a stack of blank copier paper (mostly) instead of an actual book (referenced occassionally).

The most popular approach to math education is to guide the child step-by-step through pre-algebra, whatever comes next, and then onto algebra so that the child does not have to address any of the challenges that characterize our approach to studying for the SAT. In the absense of the proper formulas and techniques, a child has to invent their own schema, algorithms and frameworks to answer questions. The downside of this approach is that one day when I need my child to memorize and apply the quadradic equation, he'll balk. It was last week in fact.

Time management and other techniques

A child will magically learn time management skils, with no formal practice or review, simply by having to 'do your math' every day, when this math is SAT test prep. For example, they all figure out right away when estimate or calculate works like it's an innate 6th sense. They find out when they are burned by tedious calculations when they could have just used common sense and logic to skip the work.

I fully expect this kid to finish the whole SAT, plus the extra mystery section they subject 12 year olds to which I'm writing a conspiracy novel about. I expect his results on the last reading comp to be worse than the first simply based on exhaustion. But most of all I expect adequate time management even though we'll never do more than 5 or 6 math questions a day leading up to the test.

5 questions a day for a year, and then sit for 250 questions in a 4 1/2 hour span. Normal SAT test prep advice on this topic consists of 'watch the clock, pace yourself, save time consuming questions for the end, guess wisely'. My advice consists of 'work with material you don't have the tools to navigate because you didn't learn it in school yet, develop algorithms you can't even explain, and then apply them on the test.'

Moe likely I'll spend the whole car ride over to the SAT testing center lecturing my son about time management.

Free range teen

Ever wonder how free range kids turn out? I'm finding out the hard way...

Free range teen

At least 5 years ago in Get Your Child Into Gat I chronicalled my efforts to create a free range child with independent walking trips to the store to get contraband snacks (soda and swedish fish) and independent bike trips to friends on the other side of the city.

This summer we took it up a notch, maybe 5 notches with an independent and somewhat covert trip to another state.

Free range preparation

The first step in creating a free range child is to get them out of the house on their own. Exercise is preferred, and worthy in its own right. A child who can walk or run 3 miles a day is healthier and more mentally fit than a child who doesn't. I've got my own chubbiness to worry about daily and lead the way.

The second and much more difficult step for a parent is to stay involved instead of restrictive. Your child is going to go their own way some day regardless, so it's better to be a trusted and supportive parent who's in the know at all times, "as a courtesy to your mother in case you end up dead somewhere". My role as truant consultant is to cover all the ways that the plan is going to lead to injury, loss, jail time and certain death. Once we've cataloged dangers to avoid, I help brainstorm options.

When I was growing up, my father used to ask "If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?" I vaguely recall the context was either staying out past 9 pm or going to the mall. My kids respond like "I'll be jumping first and expect them to follow" or "Have you ever heard of bungy cords granddude?" or simply "Heck ya! Sounds like fun!"

Free range in action

On a recent holiday weekend, my son's friends all left town. For a social person, typically the social coordinator, this was a disaster. The nearest friend was 100 miles away in a different state at a cottage, but his parents are covid-paranoid and welcome no guests.

When I was this age, back in the early 80's, I would just hop on my bike in the morning with a sandwich and a vague idea that a friend I never visited but should have was vacationing on a lake about 60 miles South West of me via highways, and off I would go. "Hey mom, I going for a long bike ride, be back before dark." You could pull this off when you are the 5th of 6th children and no one is listening anyway. "That's nice dear."

Thus when my son stated his intentions to go visit this friend without having worked out the details of how he would get there or where he would stay, I was ALL IN. Can you just show up and stay? "No." Can you camp in a tent in their back yard? "No." I wonder if I could just check you into a motel or camp ground in the area?

No close motels, the campgrounds are on the speed-dial of the drug unit of the local police department, and a 100 mile bikeride is exhausing and will waste the whole weekend. Biking alone its not effective - as in things can break - and you need to train for this anyway. Finally I just drove him in the vicinity with his bike, backpack, a hammock, a tent, sleeping bag and other gear. I went to a nearby city to hang out for the day.

That night at 7pm we had a call to discuss options, none of which looked viable. He scoped out a nearby wilderness area and determined that hammocking there for the night was feasible and safe. I did my homework and agreed. I was filled with anxiety as I drove home. When I called my wife to announce my arrival, she asked "Where is our son?" Umm, uh, I left him in Michigan. "You what?"

During my very anxious and sleepless night, I rested my hopes on 6 years of Boy Scouts (and counting) and 6 years of YMCA leadership training in Wisconsin. Meanwhile, he was wrapped in a hamomock texting his friends across the country and becoming a legend.

The legend continues

During the debriefing, we made a few adjustments. He needed the 4 day auxillary battery (mine) and not the 1 day battery (his). The weekend could end abruptly at any time and a backup plan is needed. More upfront planning is required to find safe but cool teen hangouts (if any exist).

I asked my wife what made her agree to this without an argument. "When he was 12, he came back from a bike ride at 1 a.m. on the lakefront. I told him this was a really bad thing, but he said that it was safe because there were cops everywhere. I told him never to do this again because your parents could end up in jail for this." And you're just telling me this now?

A few weeks later, he put phase 2 in action. He went stealth camping nearby with 2 friends. I'm surprised that their overly protective helicopter parents agreed to this, but apparently the parents of 1 of the children actually did. I have yet to verify this. At the pre-planning meeting, I asked for deails. "We're going to take the blue line toward O'Hare." That sounds less like camping and more like being homeless. The legend continues...

There is something that can be said about trust. These little adventures are trust builders for both parties. I don't recommend other parents think smaller. Start with a trip to the store to get candy and soda. You'll sleep better.