Award-Winning Pre-Calculus Tutors serving Vancouver

The student and I began reviewing the concepts of energy, work, force, momentum, and impulse for his Physics class by going through some online questions. I then showed him how to solve several types of trig identity problems from his Pre-Calc class.

Worked on finding the zeros of functions, with a focus on factoring by grouping. Synthetic division and substitution were other options. Also, started studying for the SAT Math Subject test by reviewing conic sections: parabolas, ellipses, hyperbolas, and circles.

The student and I went over the topics on her test review. The topics were sequences and series and permutations and combinations. She knew most of the material already and I just filled in a few of the blanks. Two things about recursive sequences and then several things about Pascal's Triangle.

I taught the student what the basic idea is behind a derivative and explained how to get average and instantaneous velocities based on the limit equation for a derivative. I then showed him how to set up the limit equation for a real problem. I walked him through a few problems on his future homework, then watched him solve a couple on his own. He has a great understanding of the material now, and I'm sure he's happy to be ahead in his class.

The student and I started off the session by reviewing the word problems I assigned last session. By drawing the situation out on a coordinate plane, the student was able to better visualize what the question was asking. We then moved on to where we left off with parabolas last week and went over his homework assignment. We discussed how to derive the graph from an equation and vice versa as well as rearranging a parabolic equation to standard form before we went over how to transform the vertex of the parabola away from the origin. Finally I taught him how to do a few basic word problems involving parabolas and had him do a few. We finished by discussing when his next test was, and the areas he felt he needed the most help with before then.

We worked on conic sections and other topics. The student had the opportunity to practice these concepts by solving problems from her assigned work. Learning was meaningful and memorable as we covered many concepts through step by step problem solving. I am confident in the student's ability to master learned concepts. The session went great.