Award-Winning Private Algebra Tutoring in Evergreen Park, IL

"Today we went over line equations in preparation for a test the student has tomorrow. We also continued to go over science concepts in preparation for a re-test he will have tomorrow. I made several suggestions to him. One most notable would be purchasing a key ring along with a hole puncher and index cards. He can write each scientific term on an index card, as he is given them, and put them on the key ring, for quick easy access. This way, in preparation for exams, he has a quick reference guide for studying key terms and ideas. "

"Today the student and I went over the new material she learned which included transformations of exponential functions. Before going over this we went over graphing exponential, quadratic, and linear functions. After graphing these functions, we went over all the components that we can learn from this function. The y intercept, domain, range, increase interval, and decrease intervals were found. I introduced a new method of calculating negative exponents so that she can compute this faster in her head. We practiced this many times with old examples from her notes. "

"For today's session we had some homework to handle which involved graphing and looking for points of intersection. The first sheet was literally just that, where our accuracy improved when I got the student a ruler from her grandmother. The only wrinkle of the 8 problems was one involving 2 parallel lines (no solution). The second sheet improved upon the first sheet by giving us some word problems and asking for variable definitions along with equations for cost and income. For each question, after graphing the two lines (because of those questionable problem designs) the best we could achieve was an estimate for the coordinates for where the intersection occurred. Finally we solved for the "break even" point algebraically, and the big takeaway I wanted her to focus on was that algebra will almost always trump graphing."