Certified Tutors From Bishop State Community College

The student and I began going over an 18-page review for her final. She has a number of puzzle problems, rather than normal organic questions, so we went over those in great detail. She said the session helped a great deal.

The student and I looked over his reading homework, correcting mistakes he made during after-school care and going over the meaning of certain questions he did not understand. We then worked on a reading comprehension passage that focused on answering questions about main idea in each paragraph and the main idea of an overall passage. The student did well with this, and I explained to him the difference between the main idea of specific paragraphs and the main idea of the entire passage. We touched on how he needs to pay attention to the question to make sure he is answering it correctly, because a main idea question may ask about the whole passage or about one specific paragraph. We finished by working on a math exercise that had him completing subtraction problems using borrowing. He did okay with this, except that he was inconsistent with following each step, and occasionally made mistakes. We will continue to work on this next session.

The student and I met for the first time today. She explained that there is an upcoming biology test on Friday. We decided that since there were three major sections on the test, we would spend our first three days focusing on these sections, then I would create a mock test for her to complete on Thursday before we meet the final time. Today, we looked at the first section of the review, which focused on seeds and plant classifications. We walked through each section and answered the review questions, referring to lecture slides when necessary. We made good progress on this section, but there was still a good amount remaining. We decided that the best way to proceed is for the student to highlight the remaining points that she was confused with and we would review those specifically next time.

The student had a test last week that he got back yesterday. He did well, but made a few mistakes, so we went over and corrected them. He has a final next Thursday, so for the remainder of the session, we worked on a review worksheet. I instructed him to make a cheat sheet with the main concepts from each chapter covered for the final.

We went over the previous exam. This test grade was higher than the previous one. After reviewing the exam, we reviewed the process of solving the problems. One specific method we covered was solving problems in variables and breaking down each variable to the simplest components. Doing this method usually results in canceling of variables and allows for easier calculations.

The student took a reading diagnostic for fluency, comprehension, vocabulary and phonics. She also completed a writing sample. Going forward she will use 3rd grade materials to improve comprehension of fiction, build non-fiction skills, and improve multiple meaning word vocabulary.