By Ilene Cohen, MS, RDN, CDCES, C-IAYT
Creator of The KEY Strategy™ & Founder & Executive Director of RefreshExams, LLC
Today I feel like celebrating almost 6 years of tutoring and providing test preparation services for the RD exam by talking about how I created my signature strategy for answering RD Exam multiple choice questions, called The KEY Strategy™. When I started my tutoring company for the RD Exam, RefreshExams, LLC, back in 2015, so I’ve already been doing this for a long time, I noticed that my students were having similar challenges in the way that they were reading and interpreting practice exam questions. So I started with 1:1 tutoring and had a handful of students who I noticed were having challenges with reading the question, so I developed this strategy with techniques over time, it didn’t just happen right away — that’s not the way authentic things happen, right? It’s like the way I started my company,
I didn’t just sit down and write a fancy business plan over the course of a week, it happened over time (for the story of how I started my company, check out my blog post from July 4, 2020), after I started tutoring Spanish on the side of my private practice, dietitians who failed the RD Exam started contacting me for help. They were not reading the questions properly, they were not identifying critical words, they were not able to fully break down. They weren’t really connecting the dots. So what happened was…..I started with the first component of my strategy which is a 3-part method and then they started to do better and then I added a second component to it, and they continued to improve. Then I realized there was a third step to this process to tie it all home. And then when I combined all 3 steps, they really started getting the correct answers.
But that wasn’t the end of that, I developed the acronym and name of my strategy, then from there I refined it because it evolves over time. For example, when I’m teaching group classes and going over questions, I realize other techniques to help students to apply the strategy. I’ll be in the middle of teaching sometimes and I’ll think of another technique or part of the strategy to refine it. So, in that sense, this process took a long time.
Even the resources used to support the strategy took time to develop. It started with a handout for the strategy, and then the handout turned into templates where our students can plug in their thought process to answer the questions, homework assignments focusing on the strategy that I hand grade and provide feedback to students, answer keys to those and another recent handout as another tool. So we have continuous updates on tools students can use to apply the strategy and practice with it! If you were curious, yes, we have our own practice questions we developed so our students can practice to really be successful!
We have another few exciting things coming with this strategy, but we’re not going to spill the beans yet, that’s kind of a surprise and we’ll let you know when we have them to share! :).
About me 🙂. Ilene Cohen, MS, RDN, CDCES, C-IAYT. Owner/Founder & Executive Director of RefreshExams, LLC, a boutique tutoring and test preparation service for dietitian board examinations. Over the past 6 years, Ilene created and refined The KEY Strategy™, a method that combines methodical critical thinking, knowledge, and application to enable individuals to successfully tackle multiple choice exam questions. I have taught my method to hundreds of dietitian students and it’s helped them to pass the RD exam with flying colors! Testimonials on our website :).
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