ACT Science Tutorials

With Mr. La Fountain

If you've taken the ACT before, You might have felt like this...

The act test moves quickly

The test is 40 questions in 35 minutes

This breaks down to 52.5 Seconds per question

The STAAR test is like a long highway trip where you can take your time sightseeing along the way.......

The A.C.T. is like taking off in a jet

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Checkpoint #1: The ACT Experience (Responses)

The ACT is not a "curriculum-based" test (and colleges aren't biased against it) | The Critical ReaderImage © Antonioguillem, Adobe Stock The notion that the ACT is a curriculum-based test is one of those hoary old ideas that, like so-called “obscure words” or the “guessing penalty” on the old SAT, has apparently now achieved zombie status. In fact, I confess I thought it had more or less disappeared into the…

The ACT is not curriculum based

From the site to the left:

"Even the Science test does not cover specific concepts from biology, chemistry, etc., although some familiarity with scientific terminology is certainly helpful. Rather, it is essentially a data analysis section that focuses on test-takers’ ability to interpret graphs and charts. "

6 Tips From Me

Read questions first, then refer back to the passage as needed. Keep the goal in mind, you want to answer the questions, you don't need to fully understand the passage (it will take too much time)
On purpose, they choose research articles that you shouldn't have learned about, this keeps the playing field level. Practicing how to read graphs and charts will help the most when preparing for the science ACT
Some background does help, being familiar with basic science terms such exothermic or endothermic and being familiar with cell replication will help with speed because you won't need to spend extra time looking for context clues to find the meaning of words.
On the other side of that, do use context clues when you are not sure what a word means.
Be familiar with the x-axis as the independent variable and the y-axis as the dependent variable. Know how to read when slope is positive, negative, or constant.
There is always one conflicting viewpoints passage, you may want to save this one for last because these passages generally have the most words and take the longest to figure out as you have to scan multiple viewpoints sometimes for one question.