Certified Tutors From Episcopal Divinity School

In this session, the student and I began working on a new chapter, the slope-intercept form, by going through homework assignments on his tablet. I began with a general introduction about the slope-intercept form by writing out the formula and explaining each variable. I then taught him that once the form was memorized, the rest of the work involved was essentially the identification of the slope and y-intercept. We covered four assignments today. These assignments were 1) identifying the slope and y-intercept given the equation, 2) writing a formula given a graph, 3) creating a graph given a formula, and 4) writing an equation given a word problem. Because these sections were closely related, I usually worked through the first few problems of each section with him to demonstrate how it was related to my first explanation. Afterwards he was comfortable working through the rest of the assignment on his own. In order to help him become more self-sufficient, I also taught him multiple ways of checking his own work that he used and discussed with me.

We went over more quadratic topics, as the student has an online quiz to take on Tuesday and an in-class test on Wednesday. He showed a continued understanding of the concepts. I suggested studying and practicing more with the discriminant, and to check his calculations and solutions.

The student did not seem reluctant at working with a tutor as his parents had anticipated, but he seemed unaware of his preparation gaps. I think that he will need some intensive tutoring in the future to cope with his demanding tasks at school and the upcoming tests, and this will be all worth it, since he learns quickly. My approach has been to go straight to the root cause of problems he has with exercises, and to start from the basics in a more intuitive and practical way, giving for example a monetary meaning to the variables of an equation. This may seem a bit time consuming now, but I think the student is very responsive to it, and he will benefit from it in few months or even weeks.

The student worked on her homework regarding interior and exterior angles. She has gained more confidence and therefore has increased her speed in solving problems. There was one particular problem that took a while but once she had her lightbulb moment, it took about 30 seconds to solve. It was very meaningful for her to come to that realization because it forces her to find more efficient ways of thinking and trains her to learn a thought process for taking quizzes and tests.

We began the session with some small talk and then got into the core of our time. The student had some science HW to complete, so I gave him time to finish it. After about 15 minutes, he was done with it and decided to tackle math. His homework was to find the area of a variety of shapes and then also manipulate equations to solve for a specific variable. For example, he was asked to solve the equation for y: 2x + y = -9. He was then given a bit tougher equations to solve as well. We should be meeting back after the Thanksgiving holidays.

Student 1 is much better at finding relationships, which helps him with the analogy portion. He needs to go back to the reading passages to search for the answer instead of using his opinion or memorization. Student 2 needs to go over parallel lines and angles. He needs to understand the relationships between analogies so he can pick the right answer choice. We will continue to work in these areas in future sessions.