I have been looking at this forum for a few months, but this is my first post as I just now have a concrete question. I appreciate any insights anyone here can provide.
My twins just turned 10 yo (4th grade) and will be taking the Explore test for the first time this month. I have a question about how the difficulty level of the actual test compares with the sample questions found at the ACT website. We downloaded the sample questions and had the kids do them like a real test. I removed the answers from the test sheet and prorated the time; i.e., the actual math test has 30 questions and a 30 minute time limit so I gave 10 minutes for the 10 sample questions.
We told the kids that we signed them up for the test so that they could get used to tests where they can't do everything and where they are time constrained (unlike the state testing they do at school). However, dd completed all four tests within the time limit, and in a couple of cases had several minutes to spare. And of the 45 questions on the 4 tests, she missed only one. Ds took a little longer and missed 2 questions.
So the sample test did not really give them any practice with budgeting time and dealing with questions they are unsure about. We are curious about how similar the actual exam is to the practice questions? We have been telling them that they can expect more challenging questions when they do the real test, but we really don't know if this is true. We'd love to hear about others' experiences. Many thanks!
Last edited by amylou; 01/01/10 04:41 PM.
