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The SAT and PSAT Reading and Writing and Language subtests use passages from or related to history, literature, social science, and science. You are expected to (a) be able to read and (b) understand written language. Let’s break that down. Being able to read includes recognizing words on a page, knowing that the letters go together to make sounds, and then blending those sounds together into words. Understanding includes knowing the meaning of individual words, their relationship to other words in a sentence, and knowing how sentences fit together in a paragraph to communicate a message. Some kids have no...

This mini-lesson is designed to teach you how to trim a sentence to clearly “see” the subject and verb. There are more considerations when dealing with subject-verb-agreement, but let’s focus on the skill of trimming a sentence today. I hope you find this helpful.   In a sentence, the subject and verb must be in agreement in number and tense. Number - subjects can be singular (one) or plural (more than one) Tense - place in time or when the action happened To determine the correct tense, first determine if the subject is singular or plural.   To find the...

I was sitting at a local coffee shop while my son attended a birthday party. He is old enough now that I feel comfortable dropping him off. Before leaving the party, the other moms said goodbye and told me to “enjoy my time.” Little did they know that I was heading  around the corner to write a blog post. I normally work at home in the early morning before the family wakes up, or in the evening after the kids have gone to bed. Today, I decided to take advantage of a couple of kid-free hours and treat myself to...