New way to prep for SATs
Back in the day (I can use this phrase, since my daughter says I'm "ancient"), the SATs were something you showed up for on a Saturday morning early in your senior year of high school, sweated over for a few hours while filling in little dots with a number 2 pencil, and then worried about for a month and a half until the results arrived (at which point your future was etched in stone...or not.)
It seems that today's high school students don't have it so easy. Many of them attend multi-week SAT prep classes, take the test years early in preparation for the "real" version, and often repeat the prep/test cycle until they get the results they want.
I heard a report last weekend on a new approach for studying for the verbal portion of the SATs: a study guide, called "Rockin' the SATs" that puts the top vocab words to music. This seems quite intuitive--I remember that I taught my kids their address and phone number when they were three by putting the info in a song.
For example, here are a few lines from the song "Harbinger:"
You're a harbinger of good things to come
A sign that it's all changin' for me.
It's happiness, euphoria,
It's something out of a fantasy.
Life was so jejune, before I met you,
It was so ordinary.
Prosaic and banal,
Pedestrian, mundane.
Nothing extraordinary.
It's even better to music.
Here's a link to "Rockin' the SATs." You can listen to the report, and a few of the songs.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6732411
Enjoy, and pass it on to high school students you know. They might as well have some fun while studying.
