Friday, March 19, 2010

CAHSEE Preparation Tips-Effective Time Management Strategies

One of the most important factors to keep in mind when taking the CAHSEE is knowing how to properly manage your time. You do not get extra credit for finishing the exam first. Likewise, you can significantly hurt your score by not finishing on time. Finding a balance between these two scenarios is crucial.


Take Your Time


There are no bonus points for speed. Rushing through the test will typically only lead to simple mistakes being made, questions being misunderstood, and wrong answers being given. Instead, take your time and make sure you are reading all of the questions, as well as the instructions in each section, completely and accurately. If you don't understand something you read, take a few moments to reread the passage in question again.


Don't Dwell Too Long


If you get stuck on a particular question, place a mark by it and go back to it later. You are better off having time to answer ten easy questions than you would be dwelling on one difficult question and running out of time without being able to finish the test. Once you have completed all of the other questions, if time allows, you can go back and review the questions you did skip over. Since you have the majority of the test questions answered already, you can afford to spend time working on the few difficult questions remaining.


Use Your Remaining Time Wisely


If you do complete the test with time remaining, use the time to review your answers. Make sure that any written passages are neat and legible and that your punctuation is correct. Double check your math, where possible, to ensure your calculations are correct. Also, check to make sure you haven't missed any questions that you may have passed over earlier. If it comes down to it and you still can't determine the answer to a question, then just take your best guess. If you can eliminate one or two answers that are definitely not the correct ones, you can increase your odds of being able to guess the correct answer.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

CAHSEE Information

For those of you who are looking for more information on the CAHSEE, I would highly suggest checking out Ace Your Exit Exam. This website has lots of information about the CAHSEE and how to prepare for the exam. This site has free video lessons and lots of sample questions. I would definitely recommend reviewing some of their free material prior to taking the actual exam. If you are looking for more information you may want to check out subscribing to their CAHSEE prep service. While I have never actually seen their paid material, based on the free stuff, I would probably recommend giving it a shot. It is definitely worthwhile for those of you who are struggling to pass. Good luck and let me know if you need any more assistance.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

CAHSEE Feedback

Many of the students who have come across this blog have now taken the CAHSEE in the month of February. So how did you all do? Feel free to leave a comment and share your experience on test day. Was the exam easier than you expected or was it more difficult than you though it would be? Was there any particular parts of the exam that gave you trouble? What did you think of the essay topics that were given? Since this blog is designed to help it would be great to know what some of the ares are that students need extra help in. This is part of the feedback process and I think it is critical to making this blog the very best that it can be. OK drop an email or a comment when you have a moment.

Friday, February 5, 2010

CAHSEE Study Material

With the CAHSEE coming up very soon for many students all across the state of California, many students are scrambling to get ready. Study material for the CAHSEE is widely available but I would like to take a moment and point out some great resources that students can use to study in the upcoming weeks. One great resource is the California Department of Education website. They offer lots of study material and there are a few links on the right hand side of this page that will take you directly to many of these resources. Using the state content is the very best way to prepare for the CAHSEE. Study hard and you are sure to do well.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

CAHSEE Preparation Tip

We've gone through a few of these tips now and we will give you another tip here that relates the the English-language Arts section of the exam. Now the English section consists of both multiple choice questions as well as an essay question. The essay question will ask you to write one of four types of essay. Today's tip will help you in your preparation for the English-language Arts writing portion of the CAHSEE.

Tip: Create an essay template.

Having an essay template makes it much easier for you to approach writing the essay the day of the actual exam. Since the essay topics will all lend themselves to be structured in a similar way, you will be able to use a template on any of the essays. When you take the time to create a template and practice writing essays using that template you will inherently improve your essays structure and readability. We will go into detail on how to create an effective template in future posts.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Another CAHSEE Preparation Tip

Continuing with the CAHSEE prep tip series today's tip is going to help students build confidence with one area of the exam at a time. This is really an extension of the last CAHSEE tip, which said that you should do at least 5 problems from the same content standard in each of your study sessions. Here is today's tip:

Today's Tip: Focus on studying one content area at a time.

This extends directly from the idea that studying one standard at a time is the best way to gain confidence. Once you feel comfortable with one standard in a particular content area, you are much more likely to feel comfortable with the other standards in that same area. Remember that many of the standards are related and build on one another so the stronger your foundation becomes then the more likely you are to be successful on the day of the exam. So to recap if you are studying one standard in the Number Sense strand then you should study all of the standards in the Number Sense strand prior to moving on to any of the other math content areas. Mathematics is cumulative and doing this type of CAHSEE preparation is sure to boost both your confidence and your score.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Today's CAHSEE Tip

Now that the holidays are officially over and school is back in full swing many students find themselves fretting over the upcoming administration of the California High School Exit Exam. Fear not young minds of California, today we will start our CAHSEE study tip series. We will try to post study tips at least once a week and more frequently whenever we can. Now whether you are currently studying for the mathematics section, the English section, or both, today's tip should be hugely beneficial to your efforts.

Tip: Do at least 5 practice problems from the same content standard in each study session.

This is a big one. If you have only 20 or 30 minutes to study a day then you can maximize that time by studying just one standard during that session. If you do that for both math and English you will have covered all of the standards in just a few short months! Focusing on one standard at at time will make it a lot easier for you to master that standard rather than just having a general idea on how to do those types of problems. 5 problems is enough for any student to master a standard. If you are looking for places to find good practice problems check out a few of the links on the right. Happy studying!