On August 10, 2006, I posted a video entitled “Critical Reading Another Way – Sam’s Story.” In that “SAT prep” video I described how a student of mine, Sam, crushed a critical reading section the first time he experimented with a new technique. The technique involved reading the questions first and referring to the reading passage only as needed. At the end of that video, I promised a follow-up report on Sam.
I met with Sam again yesterday. (He is preparing for the PSAT this week.) Because we had not worked on critical reading since the summer, we decided to do a twenty-five minute section yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised when Sam did it again; he answered every single passage-based question correctly, not to mention that he missed only one sentence completion question. If Sam lets me, I will post his critical reading PSAT score when he gets it back in December.
