January 8, 2009

St. Michael's is pleased to provide a home-based learning opportunity that we believe can help improve our students' performance on both classroom and standardized tests -- including SAT’s. This opportunity consists of a set of online math drills categorized by grade and topic, along with the procedure for engaging your son or daughter in taking these drills. We think your sons and daughters can benefit significantly from this additional practice.

Since the duration of many standardized tests is longer than a normal school class period -- which is 40 minutes at St. Michael's -- we think that students who engage in longer practice sessions can learn to function better under test conditions if the practice using these worksheets. We hope that you see how valuable these drills can be to your child, if used as prescribed, and we encourage all of you to take advantage of this resource.

Rationale and Procedure

High-performance on standardized tests requires good comprehension of the subject matter. It also requires (1) good test-taking techniques, (2) the mental endurance to keep the brain functioning well for the full duration of the test, (3) comfortableness and even enjoyment during the test and (4) the confidence in one’s ability to perform well.

Of course, we at SMS are working with your children on all these points everyday but we recognize that our students can do much better on the standardized tests -- like the upcoming TerraNova tests, and on their future SAT’s -- if they regularly engage in practice drills such as these taken under test-like conditions.

Toward those ends, we have selected some math worksheets and made them readily accessible via the St. Michael's School website. They are valuable tools we'd like you to use with your child(ren). The materials are one-page math worksheets (with the answers on a second page) whose links we've posted to the SMS website, courtesy of Math-Drills.com. Your child’s teacher has selected the worksheets for use during the next several weeks.

For most topics, there are ten worksheets labeled A through J. We recommend that you print out a couple of these and have your son or daughter sit quietly and work on them as if they were taking a standardized test. This means no television, Ipod, cellphone, interruptions, etc....

For the first session, set a time limit of a half-hour to an hour, depending upon the child’s age and disposition. (Note that we do not expect every student to complete all of the suggested sheets for their grade.) Check on the child during these practice sessions to see if they get stressed as the time progresses through the test. If they do, try to determine what is causing the stress and try to alleviate it.

Here are some suggestions from the teachers on how you may be able to help:

• As much as possible, let this be a “fun thing.”
• Look over the work after 10 or 15 minutes to see if the child’s attention or effectiveness has declined since the start of the drill. If it has, it may mean that the child needs to build endurance.
• Until they build the endurance, let them take a break and then start again. This time, have them do fewer problems for a shorter time.
• Be sure your child gets a sense of comfort so they feel good about how they are doing and have a sense of accomplishment.
• At the end of the practice period, check your child’s work against the answers (on page two of the drill). If any are incorrect, try to determine whether the wrong answer was the result of carelessness, lack of mastery of a concept, etc....
• Don't hesitate to seek help from your child's teacher, if needed.
• Have the child bring completed drills to their math teacher along with questions or requests for help. (NOTE: It would be helpful to the teacher if you circle the problems that had incorrect answers.)

Here is the link to the page that contains all of the drills. They are organized by grade and math topic.

MATH DRILL WORKSHEETS >>

We hope you all use these drills and the above procedure to provide your sons and daughters with this valuable help. As we mentioned above, we expect this will help them to do better at school and prepare them for their upcoming TerraNova tests.

Please contact us if we can be of assistance to you.