Certified Tutors From Carnegie Mellon University

Discussed previous math test and areas for improvement. Completed math homework assignment, finding the LCD and solving equations for the variable. Completed Spanish homework by translating words describing items from the kitchen and dinner table into Spanish. Studied volcanic eruptions for science class. Covered concepts including classifying, predicting, measuring, and explaining eruptions. Read chapter on volcanoes and completed review questions. Studied elements of a story for English class, including exposition (setting), rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Discussed examples of a plot's climax and gave tips to spot it when reading a story. Discussed difference between third-party accounts and memoirs. Discussed how to write a story with the appropriate elements of plot, including a climax.

I helped the student work through her homework assignment involving similar and congruent triangles, both in and out of circles, and related proofs. She understands the various options and theorems at her disposal. Next week we'll be working on a new unit: volume.

The student and I worked on Spanish. Then we moved onto Latin and she was much more interested. We worked on verb conjugations and she responded very positively. She is a much better student with Latin than with Spanish.

We did some extra PSAT critical reading practice today, on which the student got a perfect score, and well under the proper time frame. Moving on to writing skills practice, he still did fairly well, but took a little longer than he would have on the test. We wrapped up with more math practice; here he showed improvement over last week, though he progressed very slowly. We will be largely focusing on math and writing from here on.

We determined the total area and the volume of the similar prisms, pyramids, cylinders and spheres. We used the fact that the ratio of the surface areas of the similar figures in space is equal to the square of the ratio of the corresponding sides. Also we calculated the volume of the similar figures in space using the knowledge that the ratio of the volumes is equal to coefficient proportionality corresponding sides in cube. We also worked on some problems from the textbook and completed a practice worksheet over this area. We also determined SA and the volumes of figures in space using the formulas.

The student and I went over Mendelian genetics and the concept of inheritance. We also reviewed concepts such as the Punnett square, Huntington's disease, and blood types.