Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School math curriculum for the SAT in 7th grade

My 2nd-grader qualified for the CTY talent search based on both his math and verbal scores. I'd like him to have covered all the math on the SAT by the 7th grade to increase the chances he will do well on the talent search then (and perhaps even qualify for the Study of Exceptional Talent, which requires an SAT of 700 in math or verbal). Currently he is doing Singapore Math 5A after school. What math curriculum have people used to have their children ready for the SAT in 7th grade?

P.S. He is too willful to let me "afterschool" him in math more than about 2 hours/week. He spends at least as much time chasing his 4yo brother in circles around the house. I don't think I am "hot-housing" him.

My dd11 is currently a 7th grader and took the SAT this past January. While she did well, she didn't do well enough to be in the SET category, but she still has next year if that's something she wants to shoot for. We didn't do any prep for the SAT.

I'd be inclined to let him chase his brother more than to afterschool him in math in order to have him do well on a test five years down the line unless he was the one actively seeking extra math.

Would it be possible to just keep up whatever minimal enrichment you are providing now and attempt to get him subject accelerated in math at school so he is getting appropriate curriculum there moreso than inappropriate math during the day supplemented with more work at home? Maybe the school would let him do something like EPGY at school in lieu of some of their curriculum? If he got through a good chunk of their high school math, I would imagine that he'd be as well prepared as most high school students.

I do know that I've heard that some talent search kids prepare through those test prep companies -- Kaplan, Princeton Review, etc. That would probably give him test taking strategies which would further boost his chances of a high score, but if you're going to go that route, I'd wait until 6th or 7th grade I guess.

Thanks for your comments, they make sense. We're going to join the EPGY open enrollment program. I don't like the idea of enrolling someone in a test-prep course for the 7th grade (11th grade would be different) -- I just want to work systematically so that all topics are covered.

(This is so strange... I started looking through this post b/c of my dd, but so far what I've written has been about me. Maybe b/c she's still several months from being 4 yrs old, so there's just not that much to say about schooling her yet...) ANYWAY, I took the SAT in 7th grade with no kind of afterschooling or formal prep (I think I did look at the types of questions so I'd know what to expect). Did well enough in English, just missed the cut off in Math. Took Creative Writing at CTY that summer -- couldn't have been happier. The next year, I too the SAT again, did fantastic on math. No prep or rhyme or reason for it. Well, here's the reason: you don't need THAT much math to do well on the SAT -- the ceiling is pretty low, course prep-wise. One year was enough to make the difference.

I don't think I or my parents knew about the SET at the time; being more accelerated in math than my school allowed me to be might have made a difference in THAT particular outcome, but that wasn't the point of the talent search for us. For me, going to CTY was a wonderful relief from the monotony and outlier status of regular school. They never expressed it this way, but it was a gift from my parents. I felt no pressure or expectation from them; just the freedom to be myself and be surrounded by peers.

My point is, your DS will be ready when the time comes, and you don't need to do anything to make it so. Five years does seem an awfully long time to be planning for it (says the lady who will probably celebrate her dd's 5th birthday by applying for DYS...;) ) But if it's very important to you, just get him one of those test prep books a few months before. Princeton Review (at least a decade ago!) writes in a particularly accessible style and has good strategies that I think a gifted kid would appreciate.

For students who are a year away from taking the SAT, I think the book "Math Study Guide for the SAT�, ACT�, and SAT� Subject Tests - 2010 Edition (Math Study Guide for the SAT, ACT, & SAT Subject Tests)" by Richard Corn is good. It's only 157 pages and covers the theory before presenting multiple choice questions. Someone taking only the SAT can stop at page 112, the rest of the book covers topics in the SAT math subject tests and the ACT.