Junior year of high school is notoriously known for its challenging work load and college preparation, making it one of the hardest grades in high school, mainly because of the ACT.
One of the most important parts of college preparation is getting ready to take the ACT. The ACT is a standardized test given to all juniors that goes over English, science, and math. It is used to measure students’ academic abilities and help the admission offices from colleges decide who to accept.
Before juniors take the ACT, they are able to pick what schools they want their ACT scores to be shared with. While some colleges do not care for the scores, it can help the chances of getting into many different colleges. That is why it is important to start ACT preparation early, so that the scores are able to correctly represent the student’s abilities.
At Carterville High School, classes that have mostly juniors in them have started doing ACT prep during the class period. One of the classes that has been preparing almost everyday this week for ACT is Composition 101-102. Teacher Mrs. Neally said, “I try to give more help with the grammar and paired passage portion of the ACT.”
Although Mrs. Neally focuses more on those sections, she also goes over the reading comprehension portion to make sure students who may struggle with reading comprehension have more practice. Mrs. Neally believes that it’s important for students to remember “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take- Wayne Gretsky’ – Micheal Scott.”
There are many other classes that are also doing ACT preparations, including the math classes that have the majority of juniors. For the classes that are mostly juniors, Mr. Wilhelm said, “To help the students, I give them practice problems as a warm up at the start of class every now and then.”
Besides the warm up problems, on every Wednesday, there are designated times during power hour that students are able to go in for more help. Mr. Wilhelm is not the only teacher that helps students on Wednesdays, some other math teachers also do, depending on the time slot.
While some juniors are studying on their own, most use the in class time provided to work on their ACT skills. Junior Caden Jordan said, “Mrs. Neally is helping us by giving tips and tricks on the English portion of the ACT to use. I really enjoy her prep because she tries to make studying fun!”
The ACT is an important part of junior year and one of the reasons it is considered one of the harder years. However, teachers continuing to help students advance in their testing abilities makes all the difference in scores.
