The SAT and PSAT are changing. While the College Board has studied and analyzed it, who really knows how it will affect scores. The first change will be this fall, with the PSAT in October 2015 being in the new format. These changes are supposed to reflect changes to the 2016 SAT. My daughter got a chance to try out the new format with the official PSAT Practice Test #1 (Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test) from the College Board….
Welcome to High School, College, Success!
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And we are live!
Well, kinda-sorta. Since I’m doing all my own web development, it will take awhile to get this site structured. But the posts are at least up at this new domain.
This site, High school, College, Success!, here at www.highschoolcollegesuccess.com, will be the new home for the educational and life success posts from my ES Ivy website at esivy.com. This is where I plan on exploring the question of whether or not the current education system, high school through college, is teaching what’s really needed for our kids to be successful. Or at the very worst, is actually hampering the best students. Until I get an About page up and running, you can find out more about this website by starting with my first post on this subject, Success factors 1: What’s the Best Way to Guide Your Child Through High School to be a Success in College and in Life?, and following through the next posts.
If you’re looking for my posts on the best children’s books, recipes, DIY crafts, or family trip planning, you can find them on my other new blog, The Mom Behind the Curtain – because every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard, at mombehindthecurtain.com. (That site might still be in the process of migrating.) If you want to know more about me, E.S. Ivy, then for now the information up on my children’s author page, esivy.com, will have to do. Or look up at the top of my sidebar, and you can connect with with on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest.
Encouraging your kids’ dreams and Disney’s Tomorrowland
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Over at my blog the Mom Behind the Curtain [insert link] I have a post about Disney’s Tomorrowland. I talk about how it might inspire kids with what “can be” in the future. (If you’re curious if we’ll really get any of the cool technology of Tomorrowland any time soon, check out the post Jetpacks! Robots! ‘Tomorrowland’s’ Awesome Vision of the Future.) I also talk about the main message of the film – dreamers doing something to change the world. And I think it’s important to support the inspiration of dreamers as kids. Read more on mombehindthecurtain.com.
I was not compensated in any way for this posts; we paid for our own movie tickets. Thoughts about Tomorrowland are my own. Media from Walt Disney Studios.
Up Series – success and satisfaction in life
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Along with my current reading list, I also mentioned that I’ve been watching the Up Series documentaries. The Up documentaries have been a continuing project over the last fifty years, following the lives of 14 children. It was actually Tim who first found this series, and realized that it might have connections to everything I’d been reading about.
The series begins with a short film, 7 Up, that was actually meant to be a stand alone documentary showing how a child’s future in Britain was already limited by the age they were 7, simply by the class they were born into. (And yes, I realize I used “they” where I should have used “he,” but I really dislike using only the masculine form in such cases, and he/she is so awkward.) In this first film, it’s rather striking to see how the more affluent children have a pretty good idea of how their life will be charted out, rattling off a long stream of schools they plan to progress through….
Books for thought on Education and Purpose
This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.We took our kids – with our main focus being our son, who’s a high school junior – to visit two private universities in our state over spring break. While our son is very focused on a major in computer science, I took our daughters to see the fine arts department at one school, and visited with women who are a professor of interior design, a biochemist, and a chemical engineer/turned industrial engineer/turned computer science lecturer/women in engineering adviser, at another.
Meanwhile I’ve been reading, a lot….
Resilience and Optimism in new Movies
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Over on the Mom Behind the Curtain, I’ve got a new post the Disney Cinderella movie, and now it relates to what I read in Mindset, by Carol Dwek. The ability to remain optimistic is important to develop if we don’t possess it naturally. Disney/Pixar has a new movie coming out this summer, Inside Out, that looks like it might provide some insight into this process. You can read my full post about lessons in optimism and resilience from Cinderella and Inside Out on The Mom Behind the Curtain. [link]
Media from Walt Disney Studios. I was not compensated for these movie reviews and bought the movie tickets myself. All thoughts and comments are my own.
To give, or not to give homework? That is the question
This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.A friend forwarded an article to me recently with the comment “I don’t agree with this, but you might find it interesting.”
I love having friends who disagree with me. I think it’s important, to constantly challenge my own decisions. It helps to surround myself with thoughtful people who are willing to discuss the pros and cons of a different issue, and the discussion is most informative when you think you fall on different sides of an argument. Sometimes a friend convinces me to change my mind. Sometimes I convince them. Most of the time we agree to disagree, but I think everything lives on in our subconscious and influences us later. What’s important, is that it allows each of us to thoughtfully consider and reevaluate our position.
In this case, the question happens to be homework. To give, or not to give homework. That is the question….
What PSAT score is good enough to qualify for a National Merit Scholarship?
This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.Is my PSAT score good enough to qualify for National Merit scholarship? What score is needed to qualify for a National Merit Scholarship? That information isn’t easy to find, even on the internet. All the PSAT scores should all be out by now (schools receive the scores and decide when to distribute them) and a lot of students are asking that question. Even if it’s not their Junior year, some kids (or their parents) are looking at their freshman or sophomore scores and wondering if they have a shot at National Merit their Junior year….
How to improve your child’s reading speed
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Being a good reader is essential to coping with the massive amounts of homework that schools are assigning these days. And to get good at anything, you have to practice. The more you read, the faster you read. And if kids are going to read a lot, they do so voluntarily because they like it. Not because someone told them to read a book that “was good literature.”
If you don’t read children’s literature yourself, it might be hard to come up with some title ideas to give your kids. Until friends started asking, it didn’t occur to me how well equipped I was to suggest books to my kids when they started reading. But ultimately, the best test of a good kids’ book is if kids themselves like it. I’ve done a post over at The Mom Behind the Curtain that kicks of a series in which I list my the favorite books of my own kids. You can read more, at “My Kids’ 98 Favorite Books” .
Do PSAT scores and National Merit numbers mean anything?
This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.Many students and parents right now are nervously awaiting the announcement of PSAT scores, the scores that will be used to determine qualification for National Merit Semi-finalists which will give them a chance at getting a National Merit Scholarship. How nervous? Really nervous. Just take a look over at the College Confidential forums. Even sophomores, who can’t qualify until next year, are nervous.
Of course, once the scores come out, everyone will still have to await the announcement of the cut-off scores for National Merit qualification. As we wait on those announcements, I’ve been thinking lately about what the number of National Merit Scholars mean s about the effectiveness of any one particular high school. Can you use the number of National Merit Scholars as a criteria for choosing a good high school?…