Certified Tutors From Miami Dade College

Today's session covered the topic of polynomial division. The student understands the fundamentals of polynomial division but still struggles with accurate execution. We also covered a homework assignment on other polynomial operations.

In this session, we reviewed how to solve quadratic functions using primarily factoring and the quadratic formula. We spent the entire session reviewing the student's homework packet that contained his homework assignments for the whole week. This packet started off with simple factoring, which he handled extremely well and was able to accomplish each problem at a rate of about 15-20 seconds per problem. Since this work was rather simple for him, we looked ahead in his packet to the later assignments, which included more complex factoring and quadratic equations to solve. Even though he was a bit rusty in his memory of how to solve these problems, it only took a minute or so of jogging his memory through questions to have him fall back into the rhythm. We were able to approach the problems on each page of the packet, including the word problems at the back, and he was able to solve each one with little to no errors. I am very confident that he is close to becoming a master of solving quadratic equations, and with all the practice he will receive through completing this packet, he surely will be ready to succeed on the test for this material when it arrives.

Today we talked about basic statistical concepts including: mean, median and mode. We also discussed how to create and analyze distributions and histograms, what a frequency distribution/probability distribution is, calculations for standard deviation, the difference between populations and samples, and the difference between quantitative variables and qualitative variables.

The student and I worked on the review for his upcoming test. Topics included: solving quadratic equations using factoring, completing the square, substitution, and the quadratic formula. We also worked on graphing quadratics by finding the vertex, axis of symmetry, x- and y- intercepts, and direction of opening.

In math, we covered coordinate geometry with a review in area and perimeter of triangles, squares, rectangles, and parallelograms. The student did well with these, and we discussed ways to save time on graphing the points on the paper by not drawing out all of the lines like grid paper, as this can be time consuming. When selecting answer choices relating to coordinate geometry, trap questions will often switch the x and y coordinates, or add a negative to the coordinates. For reading comprehension, we practiced history passages. The student completed 3 passages and a total of 16 questions. He correctly answered 13 out of 16 questions. Sentence completions dealt with context clues in word-based sentence completions, and he answered 14/17 of these correct.

We covered participles, words that are usually verbs but act like adjectives. When it got to combining participles and gerunds, that was when the student got the most confused. We came up with a system to identify the difference quicker and more accurately.