Certified Tutors From Otis College of Art and Design

The student covered atomic orbitals, valence electrons, ionization tendencies of 1-3 period elements, and basic ionic reactions. After which, the student worked on her Chem Lab assignment while I observed.

During our session, we finished going through the Critical Reading section. The most extensive work we did was going through practice questions together and once again discussing the best strategies for eliminating answer choices and knowing when to skip. We also started going through the passage-based reading section, which was giving  her the hardest time. Our goal is to get more questions right but also to know when to skip. If she had skipped more on the SAT, she could have improved her score more than 100 points.

We started off by revising a Spanish assignment that the student had. He was supposed to make a crossword puzzle but he wrote the clues in English so we had to come up with simple clues in Spanish. This taught him to circumlocate or describe a word if he did not know the exact word. After that, we focused on reviewing math. He had a worksheet that involved exponents, radicals, and polynomials. We had to review exponents and radicals a little bit but polynomial factoring and foiling he could do very well.

The student and I finished up reviewing the kidney and began reviewing GI. We finished discussing the histology of the ureters and bladder as well as the difference in structures between the male and female urethra. We reviewed the anatomy of the bladder, how kidney stones are formed and also reviewed how peritubular capillaries function to reabsorb electrolytes and sugar from the nephron. We also went over the pictures in the PowerPoint so the student would be more familiar how to label the pictures if they showed up on the test. We reviewed the very beginning of the GI tract by going over the mouth and esophagus.

The student worked on a rather long homework assignment in which he had to use quotes from the Great Gatsby to identify different themes in the book. It began slowly but soon he seemed to pick up on how to draw themes from important quotes and was able to come up with meaningful descriptions of these quotes and themes.

In our last session, we reviewed the ACT practice exam that I assigned. She scored a composite 33, with sub scores of 33 in each of the four sections. This is an incredible improvement and a huge confidence booster just two days away from her ACT exam.