CAHSEE Prep

Practice Practice Practice

admin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 14:56:44 +0000

Many 10th graders across the state have now finished the CAHSEE and hopefully the passage rates will be stellar for the 2009-2010 school year. There will, however, as always, be students who were unable to pass the CAHSEE on the first try. For these students the very best advice is to practice, practice, practice. With all of the CAHSEE preparation resources that are given on this blog you should have no trouble finding solid material to practice with. If students would commit to just spending 20 minutes a day for a 4 week period they would probably have done enough practice to improve their CAHSEE score to a passing level. The key here is the consistency. In a 20 minute study session students should be able to complete at least 5 problems and this is a good goal for any high schooler who is preparing to take the CAHSEE. Over the course of 20 days this would give the student 100 practice problems. If these problems are standards based like the ones that are given by the California Department of Education website then students should be well on their way to bettering those scores. Now what if the student needs help solving these problems? Well many teachers would happily help students with any problems they are having with free tutoring during lunch or after school. If this is not a viable option for a student then there are always private tutoring options as well. If there are budgetary restraints students may want to look into an online service like Ace Your Exit Exam. Services like these offer an array of both free and paid preparation material. Whichever you choose, be sure to stick to the plan and practice, practice, practice. This will always be the key to improving performance on any standardized exam like the CAHSEE.

Focusing on the State Standards

admin — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:22:54 +0000

When studying for the CAHSEE it is important to make sure that all of your effort stays centered closely around the state standards. The questions on the CAHSEE address the state standards in the most straight forward way possible. So for example if the standard is something like the students should be able to add a pair of 2 digit numbers; sample questions will be very simple applications of this standard.

Ex. 1 19 +37

Ex. 2 31 +53

Ex.3 23 + 23

Now the difficulty level of the questions on the CAHSEE is higher than the difficulty level of these questions and the standards are more advanced but the point here is that the questions are straight forward. Teachers should keep this in mind as they prepare lesson material and students should also remember this as they study.

Good Luck on the CAHSEE

admin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:47:51 +0000

Many of you will be taking the CAHSEE this week and I wanted to make a quick post to wsh you all luck. Remember that you can pass the test and if you focus on just doing your best then you will give yourself the best chance to do well. Hopefully you’ve done some preparation and even if you haven’t done any specific CAHSEE prep, the last several years in school do count as well I really hope you all pass and if you need any last minute pointers or advice check out some of the tips that have been listed on this blog or check out a few of these CAHSEE Blogs:

CAHSEE Blog #1

CAHSEE Blog #2

Between those blogs and this one you should have all the basic tools that you need to do well. This is just the first step toward a bright future and I know that you all are going to really revolutionize this world. Every journey starts with a single step and that step for you is the upcoming CAHSEE! Do well!

CAHSEE Preparation Tips-Writing Tips

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:05:27 +0000

One of the most difficult parts of the CAHSEE exam, according to students, is the written section. With multiple choice questions, regardless of how hard the question is, you will still always have the correct answer in front of you. The written section, however, requires you to rely on a wide array of knowledge to produce a textual answer to a provided topic.

The first step is to organize your thoughts carefully. Take a few minutes to think about what the exam is asking for with regards to the subject or topic of the passage. Get a general idea in your head of the direction you want your response to take.

Write a brief outline breaking down key sections of the writing assignment. Make sure to note any key points you need to cover. Use the outline to create the framework for the writing assignment, with each key point being the central idea for each paragraph. Make sure each key point ties into the overall theme.

Once you have finished, take the time you have remaining to review your work. Take the time to proofread the submission at least twice. The first proofreading should be focused strictly on punctuation, ensuring you have followed all of the rules correctly. This will also allow you to focus on the more technical points of the assignment and take a step back from the verbal aspect.

The second proofreading should be done to ensure the submission makes sense and has the proper flow to it. Take note of sentence structure and meaning to ensure the submission is conveying the ideas that you wanted to get across. By taking the time to check the punctuation first, the passage will seem slightly fresher when you re-read it for clarity.

Above all, make sure your writing is neat and easy to read.

Test Anxiety

admin — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:13:35 +0000

Do you or someone you know suffer from test anxiety? Well here are a few tips to help you overcome that anxiety and perform your best on the CAHSEE.

Tip #1: Get a good night’s sleep. This is critical. When you are tired your brain is much more susceptible to negative thoughts and emotions. This will meant that anxiety has more of a chance to rear its ugly head. An easy way to limit this from happening is to simply get some extra rest in the days that lead up to your CAHSEE exam.

Tip #2 Do plenty of practice. Being well prepared and confident in your preparation is another great way to defeat test anxiety. We tend to be more anxious and nervous about things that we are not as well prepared for. If you take the time to focus on really improving your preparation this will go a long ways to help you eliminate test anxiety.

These are just a couple of simple tips that can help you to do your best on the California High School Exit Exam. These tips don’t just work for the CAHSEE but can also be applied to pretty much any other type of standardized test that is out there. Good luck!

CAHSEE Prep Topics

admin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:17:42 +0000

Rather than pass on information that I think might be useful to a lot of you out there, I wanted to stop and give you the opportunity to request some information that you might be interested in. What parts of the CAHSEE are causing you trouble? Since everyone studying for the CAHSEE is at a different level I thought it might be a good idea to ask people to share their specific areas of weakness. If you are struggling with a particular content strand or topic there is a good chance that a few other people are also struggling with that same thing. If you do have a particular aspect of the CAHSEE test that you want addressed on this blog, please leave a comment and I will do my best to respond in a timely manner. This could be anything from how to best structure your CAHSEE writing essay to what is the best way to solve probability questions. There are so many academic standards tested on the CASHEE that there is sure to be a wide array of questions. I am going to do my best to organize my responses in a way that is easy for you to grasp and navigate through. I will make use of the wordpress tag feature and this will be a good way for you to check out tips on a wide variety of topics. For example if there is a questoin related to the number sense strand of the math exam then I will tag that response with “math” and “number sense”. This way you can easily access all of the posts that are related to number sense or math by simple navigating to the math or number sense tag. This is really a nice feature and will help you as you prepare for the exam piece by piece. OK that’s all for now, feel free to email or comment with any cahsee prep topics that you are interested in learning.

CAHSEE Prep Articles

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:01:52 +0000

I hope everyone had a great weekend and got a chance to relax a little. Now that the week is back in full swing and the CAHSEE is just weeks away for so many students let me pass on some information that I think will be helpful for a lot of people out there. I had a chance to do a google search for some cahsee material and I found a couple of nice articles that I would like to share with all of my readers. The first article is entitled “How to Prepare For the California High School Exit Exam(CAHSEE) Part 1“. This article is kind of short but it does have some very useful CAHSEE preparation tips. I would highly recommend that if you have the time that you go ahead and read that article. It should only take a few minutes and if you get something out of it, it will be worth your investment in time. If you don’t, it only took a couple minutes.

Another article that I came across on the same site was “Tips and Strategies for the California High School Exit Exam(CAHSEE)“. This article was also quite useful and interesting to read. It covers some of the same stuff as the first article but also adds a few new nuggets of information as well. All in all I think they are both worth a quick read.

That’s all for today and as always if you have any questions on any of the material covered here please don’t hesitate to ask by leaving a comment on any of the posts. This site is devoted to providing the very best CAHSEE prep information available anywhere so if you happen to know of any resources not covered here please leave a comment and I will be happy to update the site. Thanks for reading!

More Preparation Websites and Resources

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:27:14 +0000

As promised we will continue to add websites, blogs and any CAHSEE related articles that we come across to make this website the #1 CAHSEE prep resource anywhere on the internet. Before we get into the actual resources I want to tell a brief story. I was reading an article this morning that gave me a pretty good feeling and I wanted to share some of the highlights with you all. The full article can be found here: http://www.thevillagenews.com/story/44779/
but the gist of the article was that there is movement in the right direction. Students who are being properly prepared for tests like the CAHSEE are scoring better and that is a great thing. The article highlighted one school in particular, Oasis High School in the Fallbrook Union High School District (FUHSD). I’d like to give you a quote from that article that kind of underscores the progress that they are seeing:

The success reported on the SARC is evident in the fact that all of the 2009-2010 Oasis seniors and all but two of the school’s juniors have passed the California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE).

The high graduation rate at Oasis is the fruit of the individualized study plans set into place by teachers for their students, said Wirth.

So let this be a message to the many cynics out there, change is possible! We as a society can give our kids a brighter future and everyone knows that one of the best ways to do that is through our education system.
OK now back to the CAHSEE resources, here are some new ones:

CAHSEE Tumblr Blog
CAHSEE Prep on Weebly

I got an email about those two sites so I wanted to add them to the ever growing list of CAHSEE sites and blogs. As always if you have a site that you would like to see included on this blog or if you come across a great resource that you think could help students prepare for the CAHSEE then be sure to let me know. Thanks for reading and have a great day.

CAHSEE Tip

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:48:22 +0000

Today’s post is going to be short as I am extremely busy with all of my teaching duties. I do want to point out that there are quite a few bloggers out there that are providing lots of good information that can help students pass the CAHSEE. Now since the CAHSEE is a relatively new test there are better and better resources constantly being developed to help students improve their performance. I wanted to highlight a couple of blogs that can help locate lots of these resources. I got a nice email a few minutes ago from another teacher who runs a CAHSEE prep blog about his new CAHSEE Study tip series. Check out his latest post for a dead on CAHSEE preparation tip. I am a firm believer that if students only had a really good study plan then they could not only pass the CAHSEE but really excel on it. With so many educators giving conflicting information on how to prepare for the exam it is good to see that a few teachers really know what they are talking about. Check out his CAHSEE prep blog for some great information.

Internet Resources

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:31:44 +0000

I’ve been really pleased to find out that I am not the only blogger out there who has decided to use the internet to help students pass the California High School Exit Exam(CAHSEE). I located a really cool page on squidoo, that lists lots of cool internet resources to help kids preparing for the CAHSEE. The lens is located at http://www.squidoo.com/cahseeprep . They highlight lots of resources that are great for helping struggling students get ready to pass the exit exam. Once of the really cool sites the listed was Ace Your Exit Exam. This site offers animated video lessons that are targeted at each content area on the CAHSEE. The squidoo lens(thats what they call webpages) had some sample videos and sample problems which were really well done. I would encourage students to go and look at some of these options. A lot of the material is available totally free although I think their full preparation course costs money. This might be money something that your school would approve and you might be able to get them to pay for it. Along with Ace Your Exit Exam, that squidoo page also had some great resources from the California Department of Education which can provide any student with more than enough study material to perform well on the CAHSEE. Here are a list of some of the resources:

Exam Blueprints(Language Arts): http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/documents/bplangarts03.pdf
Exam Blueprints(Mathematics): http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/documents/bpmath03.pdf

Language Arts Study Guide: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/elaguide.asp
Math Study Guide: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/mathguide.asp

2008 Released Questions(Language Arts): http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/documents/ela08rtq.pdf
2008 Released Questions(Mathematics): http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/documents/math08rtq.pdf

Blogs:
My CAHSEE Preparation Blog
Vox CAHSEE Prep

If you have the time and motivation I would really encourage you to look into many of these resources.