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In this lesson you'll learn what's on the SAT, what you can do to prepare, and how Knewton will help you along the way. This might be your first experience in a web-based classroom, so your team of teachers (one Live Instructor speaking on camera and one Teacher's Assistant answering questions off camera) will make sure that you are aware of all the Knewton features available to you. Additionally, you'll be introduced to the structure of the actual test; Knewton's teaching philosophy is based on understanding and using this structure to gain an advantage over other test-takers.

If you're a typical high school student, then you have been doing SAT-level algebra for about three years, but you have been doing arithmetic for about 12! Plugging in numbers (PIN), Knewton's number one math strategy, allows you to answer questions that seem to involve complex algebra, but that actually don't require you to consider variables at all.

Most people will tell you (correctly) that you need a subject and a verb in order to create complete sentence. So what makes up the rest of the sentence? What if there is a subject and verb, but it's still not a complete sentence? This lesson will introduce the building blocks of grammar, while demonstrating what the SAT does specifically to make errors more difficult to spot.

Many test-takers are under the mistaken assumption that the math and writing sections can be learned, but the reading section cannot. The reading section, like the others on the SAT, offers distinct patterns in the types of questions and wrong answer choices. Having a good vocabulary and being an avid reader will help you significantly, of course, but understanding the structure of this section will allow you to approach the questions in the reading section efficiently and intelligently.

One of the most common rules on the SAT, "singular vs. plural" tests your ability to match subjects with verbs, subjects with objects, and pronouns with antecedents (a fancy term for the noun the pronoun is replacing). To make things trickier, the SAT uses four specific Number Traps that can complicate matters. Don't worry, once you learn what to look for, these questions become much simpler.

Take the number 10. What properties does it have? It's even. It's positive. It's divisible by five and two. It's an integer. Number Properties questions almost always ask for a certain type of number (an odd number, for example), which allows you to use the PIN skills you learned in Lesson 1 in a new way. You will learn how to obey the SAT's "Variable Rules";doing so allows you to avoid doing complex algebra and focus on actually trying out examples.

To succeed on the Reading section, you need to read SAT passages differently from the way you would read a spy novel on vacation. In this lesson you will learn what passage elements to look for; finding these elements will increase your speed answering questions, as the SAT asks about the same things every time. Additionally, you will learn a strategy for answering two-blank Sentence Completion question that will help you answer the question, even if you don't necessarily know the vocab.

Believe it or not, performing math operations is actually only one of several steps you need to perform in order to answer nearly every SAT math question. The rest of your success on the math section comes from an ability to analyze the question and set up the correct equation. In this lesson you will learn to translate word problems, particularly those with rates, ratios and averages, as if you were translating a foreign language.

The 25-minute essay on the SAT is actually different from the essays you typically write for your high school English classes. The SAT does not expect you to create a perfect essay in 25 minutes, but there are several important elements that every high-scoring SAT essay contains. You will learn how to plan your essay by coming up with great examples, write your essay while managing your limited time, and apply this knowledge of essay structure to the Improving Paragraphs section of the SAT.

You'll learn how to approach number line questions, which primarily test your understanding of negative numbers and absolute value. When dealing with xy-plane questions, students often know how to find slopes and intercepts (and brushing up on these before coming to class is a good idea!), but the SAT has a very specific way of testing xy-Plane properties. You will learn how to think analytically, progress toward the creation of a y = mx + b equation, and draw your own picture to avoid doing difficult math.

On top of being grammatically correct, all sentences on the SAT must be clear and unambiguous. A modifier is something that describes something else in a sentence; if you're unsure what is modifying what in a given sentence, then that sentence is unclear. In this lesson you will learn how to identify modifiers and place them properly so that it's very clear what is being modified.

This lesson will stress the importance of never getting intimidated by questions in the reading section. You'll learn Knewton's four categories of Passage Relationship, which will help you avoid trap answers on Paired Passage questions. Additionally, you will learn that you really don't have to know all of the vocab on a Sentence Completion question, particularly a two-blank question, in order to answer the question correctly.

Geometry questions on the SAT can, fortunately, all be approached in the exact same way. You will learn this Knewton Geometry approach, while also learning what geometry topics are tested, and how knowledge of the oft-tested topics will help you answer these questions surprisingly quickly.

Even on detail questions, an understanding of an author's attitude (sad, sarcastic, enthusiastic, etc.) can inform your decision making and can certainly help you eliminate at least a couple answer choices. On top of analyzing authors' tones, you will learn how passage genre (fiction, persuasive essay, etc.) can help us figure out what the author is trying to accomplish.

Parallelisn, or the technique of ensuring that Linked Items match each other, seems to show up all over the place, but in reality, the SAT only tests parallelism in three ways: Lists, Comparisons, and Connector Buddies. As soon as you identify one of these three in a question, you simply need to check the part-of-speech for the items being linked. You will also learn the difference between a comparison that is grammatically correct and a comparison that is grammatically and logically correct.

By far the most difficult thing about functions and invented symbols questions is the notation. Some test-takers have simply never seen something that looks like "f(x) = 2x - 3" or "a # b = 2a + 3b", but in this lesson you will learn how to plug numbers into the expressions and graph the results. Once you understand the notation, the only difficulty lies in your ability to set up a proper equation, something you learned how to do in Math Lesson 3!

Every wrong answer choice (WAC) is wrong for a very specific reason. Learning the Knewton WAC terminology will vastly increase your speed on reading comprehension questions. Learning to identify the WAC Category for each wrong answer will keep you from wasting valuable time, re-analyzing answer choices that you already should have eliminated.

"Counting" may seem too elementary for a college entrance exam, but you will learn valuable shortcuts in order to calculate the number of ways a set of objects can be ordered. Probability forces you to make a few fundamental deductions, which you will learn in this lesson. Finally, you will learn how to apply exponent rules; many exponent questions can be done strategically by Plugging in Numbers, but a strong understanding of the rules' derivations will allow you to answer the questions algebraically as well.

At this point, you have learned all of the approaches and rules associated with SAT grammar questions. However, there is still one unexplored element that can serve as a tie-breaker when choosing between two answer choices: style. You'll learn how to identify certain sentence elements that are not necessarily wrong, but that tend to be awkward when found in SAT answer choices.

In the final lesson, you'll review all of the most heavily tested concepts that you can expect to see on Test Day. You will also go over guessing and timing stratgies. You will also learn what you can do in the final days leading up to the test, from how much sleep to get to what items you need to bring with you to the Test Center. Bring any SAT-related questions you might have to this class. While you have a full year of unlimited access to Knewton, this is your last live class with your instructors, and they will do everything they can to make sure you have what you need to get the score you want!