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3d •
Start Here!
Welcome in. This is The Rep Room, and it is where the daily tips live now. Here is what changed. All summer I sent a tip to my students' inboxes every morning, and got some, um, mixed results when students continued to make the same mistakes I had addressed in those emails. What I didn't realize then, but I absolutely know now, is that inboxes are where good things go to get buried and/or labeled as spam. One of my best students even reported that they were not receiving ANY emails from me because their super-tight school spam engine had locked my email address away in the depths of their Spam folder. Yeah, disaster. So the tips moved here, where they stack up instead of disappearing, and where you can scroll back through every one of them the night before a test. Three things to know. The feed is where the daily tip lands, one every weekday morning. Monday is math tips and worked example problems. Tuesday is general test-taking strategy. Wednesday is grammar strategies, designed for the problems in the Standard English Conventions portion of both the SAT and the ACT. Thursday is reading strategies and example problems for the longer reading sections of both tests. And Friday is a look back at the week. The Classroom is the library. Right now it holds one module, How to Take the Test, which is eleven lessons on the moves that work on every section of the test. Start with the overview. A new module goes up every Monday for the next five weeks: Practice Tests and Test Day on September 7, then English Moves, Math Moves, Reading Moves, and The Mindset Set. I will post in the feed the morning each one goes live. The comments are the part that actually matters. If you are stuck on something, post it. If a tip worked, say so. If you disagree with me, say that too. I read everything in here. One more thing. This is a student room. Your parents get their own email from me, and they do not see what happens in here. Your first move: reply below with two things. Your test (SAT or ACT), your target score, and the section and/or concept giving you the most trouble right now.
23h •
Textual Thursday: Reading Fiction on the Test
The ACT opens with a Literary Narrative, usually fiction, and it trips up strong students who read it like a plot summary or try to gain perfect understanding BEFORE diving in to the questions. Along those same lines, many SAT passages come from 19th century fiction, with words, titles, and concepts we don't think about very often (if at all). When you encounter a fiction passage on your test, remember one thing: Fiction on this test is not about what happened. It is about who these people are and how they feel. Read for character and relationship. Who wants what, who is tense with whom, how the mood shifts. And once you find those things, leave yourself clues on the document! Highlight, underline, annotate, whatever is necessary. Most questions ask what is implied about a character or the tone of a moment, not the literal events. When a question asks how a character feels, the answer is almost never stated outright. The clearest answers are built from their actions, their word choice, and what goes unsaid. YOUR MOVE Read one short story this week and, for each character, write one sentence on what they want and how they feel, using clues only, not stated facts. Read wide, read deep, read on. Mr. Brown
1d •
Translate the Words Into Math
Word problems are not a different kind of math. They are just regular math wearing a disguise. The best way to figure out ANY word problem is to translate, phrase by phrase, before you solve anything. A quick dictionary: "is" means equals, "of" means multiply, "per" or "for each" means a rate, and "more than" means add in most situations, unless you are talking about a percentage more than. So "Nadia earns 15 dollars per hour" becomes 15h, and "8 less than twice a number" becomes 2n minus 8. Key difference, especially on the SAT: "50 percent of 100" means something different than "50 percent more than 100." Make sure you know this distinction! Write down what your variable stands for in plain words first. Most word problem misses come from solving the right equation for the wrong thing. Coach's Move Take one word problem and translate it line by line into symbols before solving. Define every variable in writing. Numbers don't lie. Neither does practice. Mr. Brown
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2d •
Writing Wednesday - The Apostrophe Untangler!
Apostrophes do just two jobs. They show possession, as in "Aisha's notebook," or they stand in for missing letters in a contraction, as in "don't" for do not. They almost never make a word plural. The trap pairs the tests love: its and it's, your and you're, whose and who's, and theirs and there's, which takes no apostrophe at all. The trick is that pronouns do not use apostrophes to show possession. "Paul's new shoes" becomes "His new shoes." And if you can expand it to "it is," write "it's." If you cannot, use "its." Your Move Test every "its" and "it's" (NEVER its') against "it is" this week. And remember, plurals like "the 1990s" or "two cats" get no apostrophe. Write it tight, write it right. Mr. Brown
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2d •
Motivational Monday: Done Beats Perfect
A little pressure-release valve for you. You do not have to be perfect this week. You just have to keep moving. A lot of students quietly quit the second they miss a day. They think, "Well, I broke The Streak, so what is the point?" and one missed day becomes five. Do not fall for it. Missing a day is not failure, it is just a day. The only real failure is letting one skip talk you into skipping the rest. Aim for progress you can actually sustain. Messy and consistent beats flawless and fragile every time. YOUR ONE JOB THIS WEEK If you miss a day this week, get back on it the very next one. No guilt spiral, no drama. Just pick it back up again. Decide once. Show up daily. Let's get after it. Mr. Brown
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