1) Gauge your involvement based on what your child’s academic behavior is showing you and not just what your child is telling you.

Leave your successful student alone!

As a parent, you have to determine when your help is both necessary and useful and when it simply complicates an already stressful situation for your child. If your child says that he is doing the work and/or studying well for tests and the grades and teacher comments support that, believe him and go do something else (in another room)! Your child has proven that he can be an effective student on his own and you can leave him alone. While this can hurt your feelings as a parent, you want your child to be independent. You can always remind him that you are there if he needs you.

It’s never too early to get your notes and papers in order as you prepare for exams!  In this post, Natalie Shah ’18 gives insight into how to thrive this finals season.

Picture this: there’s an instructor at the front of the class, and she’s teaching students how to read.

Testing 1, 2, 3: From choosing which test is right for you to aiming for your perfect score, in this three-part series, Shipley students give the inside scoop on college admissions exams. In this week's post, Eliza Green ‘18 and Natalie Shah ‘18 break down the ACT section by section to give insight into boosting your score.

Testing, 1, 2, 3: From choosing which test is right for you to aiming for your perfect score, in this three-part series, Shipley students give the inside scoop on college admissions exams. In this week's post, Shipley's Natalia Joseph '17 gives her top SAT testing tips.

Verbal

For the critical reading passages, know that all the answers come straight from the text. There is very little inferential thinking needed to answer the questions, so if you do not see an answer in the passage, it probably isn’t right.
To simplify the passage, make sure you understand each topic sentence and how those sentences are being supported or refuted in the questions. The grammar section mostly tests students’ knowledge of standard English convention, so know the various ways to connect independent clauses, the ways in which verbs and subjects agree, how modification works, and how to effectively use pronouns.

Math

The math section draws its questions from algebra I and II, geometry, and basic trigonometry. On the test, these questions are ordered from easy to hard. It is important to solve the questions incrementally and to make long word problems with variables more concrete by substituting numbers and using your answers. Something most test takers do not know is that all the figures are drawn to scale unless stated otherwise, so you can use the figure to arrive at the answer. Lastly, for the non-calculator section, make sure you know your multiplication tables and exponent rules.

This post originally appeared in the October 2016  issue of the Shipley Beacon.

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In my role as Director of Enrollment, I get many questions from prospective parents/guardians, but the one I enjoy the most is this: “What is the value of a Shipley education vs. a public school education?” I love that question because for me, for Shipley, it’s an easy one.

Testing 1, 2, 3: From choosing which test is right for you to aiming for your perfect score, in this three-part series, Shipley students give the inside scoop on college admissions exams. In this week's post, Sarah Engelman '19 looks at how to decide which college admissions test is right for you.

For their final exams, Shipley Seniors in Ms. Greenberg’s 21st Century English Class undertook creating their own presentations inspired by TED Talks. In this week’s post, student Sam Lazarus ‘17 walks us through what the experience taught him.

I love teaching — it’s my passion.  Growing up, I never planned on becoming a teacher, but after accepting an opportunity to spend one year in the classroom after finishing school (many years ago), I was hooked!  I feel fortunate to have found my way to Shipley, where I can share my love of learning math with students every day.

1) Understand the Math in Focus approach to teaching and learning. (Hint: It’s about learning how to think, not memorizing formulas.)

The goal of a mathematical classroom is not to race to the answer, but to learn how to think. We do that by asking questions like: How did you get that answer? Is there another way? How many ways are there? What do we know? What can we do? What is the same? Different? We don’t give students the formula right away. Instead, they discover it themselves through guided learning. Memorizing formulas and rules is not abstract thinking. In fact, it completely shuts down students’ thinking.