Strategies for ISEE test prep

While working on ISEE test prep with a student in Boston, MA, it was important to stress the value of learning test-taking strategies, not just the skills necessary to answer the questions on the test. For example, most of the math questions are made up of a skill set, such as multiplying decimals, but are framed by a word problem. A question might ask, “If a wall is 3.5 meters long and 2.9 meters wide, what is the area of the yard inside?”

The student must not only know how to multiply decimals, but must FIRST be able to understand that this is a multiplication problem, because area is found by multiplying length times width. Then the student must extract the data necessary to solve the problem, and finally, must do the actual computation. My tutoring sessions incorporate teaching the skills necessary to break down problems, and as well as reinforcing the skill sets that the students must know in order to perform well on the test.