SAT words?

Lately, I've been doing more reading than writing; mainly because September is so busy I don't have concentration time. I love to write but it still requires a clear head and space to be able to reason out the scenes.

As a reader, there are a lot of words I just plain take for granted. I assume everyone else knows them also, but I was teaching the other day and I evidently used words my students had never encountered. They accused me of prepping them for the SAT so now, when I throw out a word they don't know we use it as a teaching moment and call them our SAT words.  But seriously, I'm very surprised in some of the words they don't know. Here are just a few.

Conscientious (they even accused me of making this one up)
procrastinate
lethargic
negate
postulate
pretentious

Oh, and I don't teach English. I teach art so I think I must surprise them with this knowledge. Could it also be that the use of simpler words and acronyms that folks use when texting is helping us lose some of these words? It does make one ponder.