Teachers learn new strategies to help improve ACT scores
High school math teachers from around the state, and two from Louisiana, were at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts this week for a two-day workshop on how to help students improve their math scores on the ACT test.
The workshop, “Leveraging the TI-84 Plus CE Graphing Calculator for ACT Test Scores,” was offered by the Teachers Teaching with Technology professional development team from Texas Instruments. It is designed to help educators leverage calculator technology to help students better understand key content areas and gain insight into certain strategies and techniques to teach their students.
“We provide training for teachers all across the country and we’re here doing a workshop for Arkansas teachers for the ACT math,” instructor Corey Boby said Thursday.
“This is our second day. We have 27 teachers from around the state and we’re teaching these teachers strategies to help their students improve their scores on the ACT math section of the exam.
“This will help get students ready for college and get them scholarships to universities so that they can become productive members of society,” he said.
A lot of students struggle with the math portion of the ACT and then get into college and struggle with college algebra, Boby said.
“What we’re trying to do is get them more confidence in mathematics, so that they can get into college and get through that college algebra class so that they can get a degree. People just don’t like math. We know that. I hear it all the time: ‘I hate math,’ ‘I don’t like math.’ Well, we still have to get them through this test so that they can go through college and be successful,” he said.
Elizabeth White, a math teacher at Benton High School, noted she and the other educators learned several valuable strategies they can take back and use with the students to better equip them for the ACT.
“We’re teaching them things like how to use answer choices to plug back into equations,” she said.
“Little things, calculator tricks — things that they can do and, really, just encouraging them.” — Elizabeth White, a math teacher at Benton High School
“We’re teaching them how to maximize their time. The ACT is very time strenuous on the kids. Little things, calculator tricks — things that they can do and, really, just encouraging them.”
An interesting fact White said she learned in the workshop was that even getting 25 to 30 questions right out of the total 60 in the math section is enough to get the students into college.
Ladawn Ross, who teaches math at Mount Vernon-enola High School, said it is all about the strategies and confidence built in the students that will have an impact on their scores.
“With the ACT, it is very much a test-taking strategy. It’s not so much the way that we would teach in our classrooms, but the things that we can do to help them improve their scores is such a vital thing to kids. It’s so important to them to get the score that they’re aiming for. So just the test-taking strategies and things that are specific to the ACT that we’re learning here are going to make a difference for my kids,” she said.
The ACT was originally an abbreviation for American College Testing and is a standardized test used for college admissions in the United States. It covers four academic skill areas: English, mathematics, reading, and scientific reasoning.
ASMSA STEM Pathways math specialist, Tracy Watson, who was responsible for organizing the workshop, said she was amazed at the turnout and reception of the event. She noted after sending out an email on the free Listserv for Arkansas mathematics educators, ARMATH Listserv, that within a month and a half the workshop was filled.
“I think that kind of shows that the math teachers are wanting to help their students score better on the ACT and are looking for strategies to bring into the classroom,” she said.
“The ACT score, even though some colleges now are de-emphasizing the ACT score, it still is involved in a lot of scholarships’ guidelines. And so getting a student to a 19 or 21 could make the difference between thousands of dollars of savings of going off to college. And so anything that we can do to help them is a good thing,” she said.
“We think it’s fun,” Boby said. “I’m sure, you know, if you’re not a math person, you might think, ‘Oh, gosh, how could you spend two days (doing this),’ but for us we enjoy talking math and working with math, but we also are focused on the students. So I think it’s been successful. They’ve been very engaged.”
He said people have been asking a lot of good questions and coming up with good strategies, noting, “The proof will be when they take it back and they use it in their classrooms.”
Watson said she thinks the workshop will open up more opportunities in the future for ASMSA to host.
“I’m really privileged to be in a position now to host these kinds of workshops to help the math teachers of Arkansas help their students. So I hope to keep doing this in the future and have more opportunities next year,” she said.