Sarah Matney shouts “When in Doubt,” … students clap and yell back … “Commas Out!”
“The ACT loves to throw in extra commas when they may not be needed, so I am always engaging students in easy to remember one-liners to remember the rules,” said Matney, a MasteryPrep ACT and SAT instructor. “These rules are especially helpful to students attending our Boot Camp classes where you have such a short window of time to cover the most heavily tested items, refresh pertinent test content, and teach test-taking strategies that enable them to score higher.”
MasteryPrep Boot Camps, which are available through the MasteryPrep Ready Platform, or as a stand-alone resource, can give students that final push they need to score college ready. They cover ACT®, SAT®, WorkKeys®, TSIA2, Louisiana LEAP 2025 Geometry, and Algebra I in Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Louisiana. MasteryPrep delivers over 1,000 Boot Camps to more than 75,000 students each year.
Boot Camps are offered in-person or virtually (ACT/SAT – 6 hours in-person or 4 hours virtual, EOC – 3 hours; TSIA2 – 4 hours). They are offered through a full-day workshop during school hours, after-school or Saturday programming, and during the summer and in the midst of school summer camps. Boot Camps are intended for that last-minute boost before the test date. If you plan on implementing a Boot Camp four weeks out and reviewing with the students the materials they went over or right before test day, MasteryPrep has you covered.
“The MasteryPrep Boot Camp strategies, instructor guidance, and practice items provided our students the opportunity to polish and perfect, and thereby, improve their scores from one test to another,” said Melanie C. Keeling, College and Career Postsecondary Readiness Coach for Bowling Green, Kentucky-based Warren East High School. “We look forward to this year's MasteryPrep Boot Camp for our juniors.”
MasteryPrep-trained, expert instructors lead students through their workbooks, sharing effective strategies and tips for students to practice in the days leading up to their test date. Each subject includes mini-tests that the instructor will use as a simulation of a real test day. After students complete each mini-test, the instructor will go over any questions that the students might have gotten wrong or had difficulty solving. In addition to learning key content for success and essential test-taking techniques, students also learn pacing and time management, strategies for different question types, and effective guessing strategies.
“Process of elimination is a very valuable tool on any multiple choice test,” said Matney. “If you can use falsification techniques to disprove answers, then you’re going to be more confident when you choose the correct answer, and therefore your accuracy will improve. We hit that strategy hard in Boot Camps. Most students just look for right answers, or what they perceive as right answers, and confirmation bias can occur when that happens, especially on English and Reading questions, so we work on process of elimination to combat the natural tendencies that test writers feed off.”
Through Boot Camps, MasteryPrep fills a niche, Matney said, of narrowing down the most important content that students should prep for before a test. “There is a belief that college-ready tests cover so much content between sixth and 11th grades that it is hard to determine where the questions will come from,” said Matney. “However, we have a team at MasteryPrep that examines the testing patterns and creates useful content and suitable practice resource material for students.”
About MasteryPrep: Founded in 2012, Baton Rouge-based MasteryPrep provides mastery-based college readiness services and resources, such as for the ACT and SAT, to more than 2,000 schools and districts nationwide. In addition, MasteryPrep has helped more than 1 million low-income students prepare for the ACT and SAT at no cost to the student. Nationally, MasteryPrep is the preferred ACT and SAT prep provider of the Council for Opportunity in Education, expanding college opportunities for low-income, first-generation students, and students with disabilities in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., the Pacific Islands, and Puerto Rico. MasteryPrep is ranked among the Inc. 5000 “Fastest Growing Companies”; featured by “Entrepreneur 360”; and selected among the “Growth Leaders” by Louisiana Economic Development for two years in a row.
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