Dear Academic Approach Families & Colleagues: Over the years, we’ve been impressed by the achievements of so many of our students, and we’ve reflected on what key habits are correlated with their success. As we approach spring exams and summer schedules, we want to identify three habits of successful students that are especially relevant this time of the year: Goal Setting When a student is passionate about pursuing long-term goals, it provides context—a Why?—for learning. Help your student establish a long-term context for learning: “If I work hard in my high school classes, I could end up getting into a program that trains me to do A, B, C, so I can make an impact on X, Y, Z.” If academic achievement becomes a means to a motivating end, students invest more persistence and patience in the learning process. Students who set and pursue goals are happier and more likely to persist in setting more ambitious goals in the future. Anticipating Obstacles & Planning Students who forecast and plan—clearly anticipating challenges—are much more likely to navigate obstacles successfully. Research on patients preparing for medical procedures can shed light on how careful, clear anticipation helps minimize anxiety in the face of challenges: patients who were warned before an unpleasant medical procedure about what would happen and how much it would hurt found that the warning significantly reduced their actual discomfort during the procedure. Think ahead to final exams or next year’s coursework. “How will I space out preparation, given the time I have, the effort required, and the scope of the challenges I face? If my spring is busy with extracurriculars, I'll feel stressed by trying to do too much at once, and prepping earlier for finals will be necessary. If my fall is filled with commitments, preparing for difficult courses during the summer would be smart.” Students who identify challenges and their impact in advance will find them less difficult to overcome when they inevitably occur. Cultivating Positive Habits & Mindset The end of a school year presents an opportunity for reflection and establishing new goals: Cultivate a positive mindset intentionally. When report cards, spring MAP scores, or other test scores are returned, take time to analyze, explain the results, and identify next steps to make improvements. The stories students tell themselves about their performances are critical to their self-image and self-esteem as learners: these stories affect both their mood and performance. Telling stories in a positive language of growth mindset can build positivity about and persistence in learning. Build simple, consistent routines. Summer, too often, leads to the relaxation of rigor—school is out and so too are habits and structure. Rigorous work engaging in academics skills both limits summer learning loss and develops working memory, so students return to school in the fall well-prepared for more advanced courses. We’re happy to share other key tips and resources. Feel free to give us a call at 773-348-8914 or get in touch by filling out our contact form. Contact Us

Dear Academic Approach Families & Colleagues: As families and schools are planning summer schedules, we are hearing many questions about using this summer—in particular—productively for both test preparation and academic tutoring. 3 Reasons Why Summer Instruction is Valuable Combating summer learning loss It’s been well known and well researched that students on average lose 25-30% of school-year learning over the summer. What is not yet well known is how this rate of loss might be exacerbated now by a full year of remote and hybrid school learning. Anticipating and remediating that potential increase in learning loss raises the importance of this summer as an opportunity to engage students in needed academic skill building. Assessing the student’s availability to learn Finding time during a busy school year to supplement learning is a challenge; many students are focused—as they should be—on staying abreast of day-to-day assignments and lack availability to either remediate skills in need of development or enrich those that can advance further. With more time and available working memory, concentrated instruction during summer can have a deep and lasting impact, helping students internalize skills deeply. Building stronger outcomes Unsurprisingly, our data show that students who begin preparing for college entrance exams in the summer show greater growth on the final official test than those who begin during the school year; in fact, students who start the summer before junior year versus junior spring can double their growth. We’d love to help plan for the summer and work with you. Please call (773) 348-8914 or email us to schedule a complimentary assessment. Be well, Matthew Pietrafetta, Ph.D., Founder & CEO

Dear Academic Approach Families & Colleagues: This July will mark 20 years of Academic Approach answering a variety of your questions regarding test preparation, and one of the most frequently asked: When is the right time to start test preparation? Avoiding Extremes Your common sense tells you the obvious: avoid extremes. Last-minute cramming does not do enough, while overpreparation can be associated with burnout. So what’s the right amount of time? Time & Performance In “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell’s popularized the claim that whether in sports, music, or academic performance 10,000 hours of practice is how long it takes to become an expert in something. Not only is this claim impractical in most contexts (10 hours a week for 20 years to get to expert level--yikes!), but its focus on quantity and not quality obscures the true value of high-quality practice, which provides a meaningful learning experience: a cycle of study, retention, performance, insightful feedback, modification, and improvement. In fact, a later study found that looking at quantity alone accounted for only 4% of the variance in performance in education. That said, we know Gladwell is correct in that having enough time to prepare matters; there is certainly a minimum amount of practice required to develop expertise. But why? In her research on choking under pressure, former Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and current president at Barnard College Sian Beilock highlights why having the time to practice matters: it reduces the burden of stress on working memory, so the capacity for thinking and problem solving is improved by mitigating the impact of anxiety during high-stakes events like the ACT and SAT. Beilock’s research shows that practicing under stress, even a moderate amount, helps performers feel comfortable later when standing in the line of fire. They have increased confidence to face challenges calmly, retrieve key information reliably, and thereby perform optimally. What our Research Shows In looking at our own data, there is a clear relationship between preparation time and performance. Students who start preparation in spring of sophomore year in preparation for a final test they take in spring of junior year or fall of senior year nearly DOUBLE the growth of students who start the summer prior to or fall of senior year in preparation for a senior fall exam. While this data represents average growth (and students follow very personalized pathways of learning), it does offer something broadly directional: When preparing to perform well on a summative exam of grammar, reading, math, and scientific reasoning that spans 7th through 11th-grade curriculum, the appropriate amount of time to prepare matters Spacing out—rather than cramming—preparation affords the student a gradual, in-depth process of learning academic content and skills, so working memory functions more efficiently and performance stress can be managed down more effectively over time Therefore, we encourage—when possible—the use of sophomore spring and summer to begin instruction in order to achieve optimal performance. Be well, Matthew Pietrafetta, Ph.D., Founder & CEO