The SAT: it looms at the end of students’ V Form year like a forbidding
peak. Two years ago, in an
effort to help students prepare for this key
evaluation, Berkshire instituted the SAT Tutorial Program. The
program, which is available to all V Form students, aims to strengthen
students’ basic skills and teach them key strategies they can employ
when test day comes.
This fall marks the beginning of the third year of the SAT program. SAT
classes began on September 28th and will continue through April with the
goal of preparing students for the May, 2011 SAT. In class, students
review content in a structured way and are taught strategies that will
allow them to approach the SAT with greater confidence. Students attend
class twice weekly during a free period, with one class dedicated to
reviewing the math component of the SAT, and the other class focused on
the Critical Reading and Writing sections. Each student takes a
diagnostic test at the beginning of the course, enabling them and their
teachers to evaluate where their strengths and weaknesses lie so that
instruction can be targeted to the areas most needing improvement.
Current seniors, who took the course last year, have acknowledged its
benefits. “When it came to test time I felt more prepared and better
about the test,” said
Annie Ahrens '11. All School President
Teddy Benfield '11 commented
that “the class just helped me realize the importance of the little
things…without the SAT prep class I would have been all over the place
and I wouldn't have known how to utilize my resources.”
During its first two years, the program has been very successful in
helping students to improve their SAT scores and the Director of the SAT
Tutorial Program,
Maura MacKenzie,
is optimistic that this trend will continue. “Last year, 49% of SAT
Tutorial participants improved their PSAT to SAT scores by 150 or more
points, with three students actually seeing improvements of 370 points!
In addition, while the national average improvement from PSAT to SAT is
55 points, Berkshire students’ improvement averaged 128 points.
Increasing our instruction time to twice weekly should further support
our efforts to help our students.”
The SAT Tutorial Program faculty members are
Kate Garbutt, Michael Kalin, Virginia Watkins and
Maura MacKenzie.
and all-boys prep school outside of Boston, for a 1-day mini-symposium on Student Biomedical Research. The goal was to foster collaboration, communication and community outreach with our students. AMSR students Liza Bernstein '13, Sissi Wang '13, Lars Robinson '13, Elsie Guevara '13, Ernest Yue '13, and Nate MacKenzie '14, gave short talks about their work in the new Bellas/Dixon Math and Science lecture hall. The talks were followed up by break-out sessions where Belmont Hill students described their research projects and students discussed commonalities between the projects and future goals.
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