Let's Get Serious!

Hi everyone!
The Dartmouth program has just reached the mid-term mark! This our first time starting the program in the Upper Valley, and we have a fantastic group of about 25 involved Dartmouth students as well as 40 committed high school sophomores and juniors. Lindsay and I have been so impressed both by the enthusiasm and energy of our coaches and by the motivation and determination of our high school participants.
That said, we seem to be experiencing a bit of a mid-quarter slump. With temperatures mounting in the high 80s and spring sports at their peak, it seems that SAT prep has become the less glamorous last priority. Our attendance has shrunk to a core of a little more than half the students. However, when some of the top students admitted to coloring random bubbles on sections of the second diagnostic, we decided that we needed a new approach.
Inspired the excitement from the first few weeks, we tried to develop a new curriculum that capitalized on the students' competitiveness even if it did end up resorting to some old fashioned scare tactics. We are encouraging more large group activities as well as raising expectations and accountability in terms of student/coach interactions. Thanks to some ingenious creativity on the part of one of our math coaches, we changed the name for the next half of the prgram from Let's Get Ready to Let's Get SERIOUS! With the June 2nd SAT less than a month away, we need our program to buckle down and get to business!
We have started to implement these LGS goals first, by having the students take greater ownership over their scores. For the second diagnostic, each student graded a portion of the test not only to see which problems were right and wrong, but to better gage the sheer volume of right/wrong answers affiliated with his or her score.
Secondly, we want our students to have a realistic understanding of the relationship between test scores and college admissions. During a big group jeopardy game, we introduced SAT Scores and the Colleges You Want To Go To as one of the categories. By guessing the average scores for many of the reach schools the students are interested in, they became more acutely aware of just how important the SAT is! Even better, afterward the game, several of the students pledged to do their homework (more) regularly!
Thirdly, we have been promoting the importance of good attendance. During each session, Lindsay and I call and confront the missing members of the LGR party. We've found it especially helpful to engage the parents when we call, especially since some of them are surprised to learn that their son or daughter has been skipping.
Lastly, we are putting a particular emphasis on strategy. We have noticed that many of the students don't take advantage of any of the techniques during the practice testing. Our coaches have been stressing the strategies in the classroom as well as in the large group jeopardy sessions.
We have had an incredible experience founding and directing the Dartmouth chapter of LGR and look forward to the rest of this term and future sessions!