Lately my students have been answering the hard questions. The get sucked in by the cuteness and the fluffy factor. “But it looked so easy.” Even though we talked about how it doesn’t make sense to grab big pumpkins if all the pumpkins are worth the same amount. For some reason, they find the […]
Math
SAT Math pictures are always drawn to scale*
SAT math pictures are ALWAYS* drawn to scale
Candy Corn and Chocolate Kisses…Oh My!
In honor of all the candy mixtures being prepped for Halloween parties, here is a SAT candy problem. Mixture problems These don’t show up very often on the SAT – which is a good thing since my students really struggle with them. This is similar to a hard question in Test 10 of the Blue […]
You don't need a fancy calculator
My calculator always makes my students laugh. It doesn’t even have an exponent button. And yet it has gotten me though each of the 40 or so SAT tests I’ve taken over the past 5 years. Thinking wins over pushing buttons. Every time. The calculating part of the math section is usually pretty straightforward. You really don’t […]
SAT Math Strategy: Use Speed Bumps to Slow Down
Often my students are so thrilled when they solve a math problem, they jump right to the answer choices to see if they can find the answer. Sometimes it’s not even a “mistake” – the question asks for x+1, my students solve for x, circle x in the answer choices and are dumbfounded when they […]
SAT Study Tips
The blog is getting rather long and verbose, so I organized the most popular posts by category. Here is an organized listing of SAT study tips for overall strategy, math, critical reading, and writing SAT Study Tips