by Nick Harrington, Staff Writer

It’s a test everyone has to take his junior year at Central. It’s not the ACT or SAT, it’s the 11grade literacy exam. Students must pass this test to receive credit for English, which means that they must also pass this test to graduate. With this much at stake, Literary Coach, Tina Hayley, has started a program to help students prepare for the exam.

The Super Saturday Literacy Sessions help students develop effective strategies for taking the exam.

“The sessions do not teach the information that will be on the exam,” Hayley said. “Students are supposed to learn that in their English class. The sessions help students develop strategies that will help them finish the test and answer all the questions,” Hayley said.

Hayley recommends that students answer the open response question first, as that makes up 67 percent of the grade.

“The biggest problem with students is that they do the multiple choice first and run out of time to do the open response, which means that even though a student may have done well on the multiple choice, they’ll still fail the exam,” Hayley said.

Besides learning new test-taking strategies, students who attend the sessions also have some fun.

“We eat pizza and just recently had a drawing for Best Buy gift cards. We wouldn’t make students come to school on a Saturday if they weren’t going to have a little fun.”

However, the sessions are done for a serious reason.

“Central is currently in Year 4 School Improvement, which means that the state gives us a lot of things that the school must do because of low test scores. We do not want to go into Year 5.”

However, Hayley has faith in Central students and believes that they can make a difference.

“Central has some of the greatest students I’ve worked with, and the students at the sessions prove that,” Hayley said.