TLDR: 

• Dodgeball Strategy 
  • Take the entire Math test in 20 minutes! 
  • Answer as many questions as you can in 20 minutes and then pick one (A-F) for all unanswered questions
  • See your students confidence soar

Video Transcript:
If you're in school leadership, or in the classroom, you need a way to help students who are scoring below benchmark on ACT Math. What I want to do today is give you one of TorchPrep's favorite tools to help students reach benchmark on ACT Math, so that by the end of this video you have a practical tool to use in the classroom to help students get one step closer to benchmark in ACT Math. We call this strategy. . . TorchPrep's Dodgeball Strategy.

We take a 60-minute test and make it 20 minutes, and we have students go through and get as many questions as they can as fast as possible. And then, with one minute left, we have them guess on every single question they have left, so maybe they only do 15 questions in those 20 minutes. In that final minute, they're gonna put in A for every single answer that's left, so they might fill in 45 questions at the very end, answering A for every single one.

And then we grade it. Before we grade it, I want you to understand, what we've done here is we've taken a student who usually, in 60 minutes, might not give full effort, and said, “Hey, in this 20 minutes you're gonna try as hard as you can to get as many questions right as you can,” and when they try really, really hard in 20 minutes, the results are ASTOUNDING!

Whenever I do this exercise and we do go to grade it, I have students going from (depressed / exhausted) ... to ... (amazed / full of joy). Because they are blown away at how much their score goes up. I'm constantly seeing people go from 15 to 18. From 16 to 20. I've seen 18 to 22. Students are recognizing that they have what it takes on this math test.

Now, this sounds great, and it's like, “Oh, I want that to happen, but how do we do this?” So what I'd like to do for you really quick is I want to model the way that I do this with students. And I'm gonna show you exactly how to talk to a student, how I would set up this practice.

You're gonna need about 30 minutes of class time to do this, and I'll show you how this works, I'll do it real quick.

“All right everyone, today what I wanna do with you is I wanna give you a full-length ACT Math test. Sixty minutes, full-length ACT Math test.” Then they all start groaning, “No, no.” “Okay, I'll cut a deal with you. If we do a 20-minute test, not 60 but just 20, but try as hard as we can, are you all down, can we do that?” And they're like, “Yeah, please yes.”

“Okay, let's do that. So we're gonna take 20 minutes, and we're gonna open the Math ACT, and we're gonna do as many questions as we can. I'm talking, I wanna see you intense, going for it, you should be sweating because you're trying so hard. And then, after 20 minutes, I'm gonna say 'one minute remaining', and when I say that what I want you to do is pick the answer choice A or F, depending on which bubble it is, A or F, and I want you to bubble it all the way through. 

“So say you only finish 15 questions, I want you to bubble in A or F for the other 45. You're gonna work hard for those 19 minutes, then I'm gonna call one minute left, and that final minute, that 20th minute you're gonna bubble in A, F, A, F, all the way through. And then we're gonna grade this, and you're gonna like what you see.”

So that's how I model it, do that. If you have questions, email TorchPrep, we're happy to help. What we wanna see is more students hitting benchmark in ACT Math.

Make sure to check out the rest of our post to find even more ways to beat the ACT and reach your goals in the pursuit of college.