Certified Tutors From Oregon Career & Technology Center

The student and I went through several integral topics from some of her previous assignments and quizzes including finding the area under a curve and differential equations. She is doing well solving definite integrals and we talked about some ways to determine which technique is needed to solve some of the more complicated integrals. We also went over how to solve for the constants in a function after taking the integral or solving the differential equation. The student's class recently took a practice AP exam and she will be asking her teacher if she can see which topics or questions she got wrong. If her teacher is unable to let her see her practice test, she will take one of the practice exams from her study guide and we will go over it during our next session.

Today we worked on lesson 86 and 87. This included unit multipliers, finding surface area, lateral area, volume, and solving single and multi variable problems. We also did work with percentages and simplifying expressions. The student seems to have issues doing the reverse operation when solving equations, specifically when adding and subtracting constants. We did a few extra problems of this type to get a better understanding of it. She does fine with multiplying and dividing, but the addition and subtraction seems to throw her off a bit.

The student finished her summer review packet. We focused on precalculus, domain and range, asymptotes, and graphing. We learned more about polar and parametric equations and spent time finding all of the solution to trig problems.

Today we covered plotting numbers on a number line and graphing sets. The student was struggling most with compound inequalities, but after a few practice problems she understood them. She was focused and ready to learn. I advised her to copy the definitions from that section onto her notebook to study later. Her homework was the remaining problems from "extra practice." I will have her take a comprehension test next Thursday to see her progress.

During this session we continued working on the student's packets. It went well; we focused on expanding and simplifying equations by using the various properties (associative, commutative, inverses, etc.). She is picking up the topics very quickly. She is very quick and I can see she is getting more and more comfortable with the material.

SPECIFIC CONCEPTS: 1) Passage Reading: focus on the 1st or last sentence of each paragraph, words that indicate direction of the argument, summarize in a short phrase. 2) Selecting correct answer: general questions vs. specific questions, skimming for the keyword, finding context by reading above and below a line reference. For inference questions, eliminating choices that make too great an inference. STRATEGIES/SKILLS: Correct answers on the GMAT must be bullet proof. Limit yourself to 120 seconds.