Certified Tutors From Atlanta Technical College

The new unit is basic trigonometry. I explained the basic concepts (Pythagorean theorem, trig functions, special right triangles) and began a study sheet for her to use. We discussed solving for unknown sides of a triangle or unknown angles using trig functions or their inverse. The student understood the concepts but had some minor trouble identify the correct side/angle to use. We also briefly covered the relationship between degrees and radians and the unit circle.

The student and I are making steady progress. He is opening up and is more engaged in our sessions. We reviewed how to solve algebra equations in our session today.

In this session, we did geometry. We went over how to find the area and perimeter of shapes. The student knows how to do this but wanted more practice. We started off by find the perimeter of shapes. In order to find the perimeter of a shape, he simply needed to add the sides. This applied to triangles, parallelograms, rectangles, and squares. One example was a rectangle. The rectangle had 15 ft. as the width and 25 ft. as the length. There were two ways that he could have done this. He could have added them all up or used a formula, p = 2(l) + 2(w). He decided to add the sides; the perimeter was 80 ft. I reminded him to always put the units with the answer. Next, we found the area of shapes. For these, he needed to know the formulas for those shapes. An example was a triangle. The triangle had a height of 10 ft. and a base of 12 ft. He needed to put those two number into this formula: A=1/2(bxh), with h as 10 ft. and b as 12 ft. The answer is 60 ft. squared (it's ft. "squared" because the numbers are being multiplied). The student was not struggling with anything. He did an excellent job.

We began working with angle relationship identification and meaning. An example would be, what does it mean for two angles to be "same side interior." One strategy we discussed is imagining sliding an angle on parallel lines over one another so that you can visualize their relationship to one another better (e.g.: congruent, supplementary, and so on).

The student and I reviewed the key vocabulary and concepts of his current chapter: greetings and leave-takings, general questions that young people might ask one another; classroom objects; the subject pronouns; the verb avoir; and the indefinite articles. We then worked on his homework for the next two classes. We finished by previewing the beginnings of Chapter 2 -- activities that young people like and don't like to do; the definite articles; and the present tense of a typical 1st conjugation verb -- aimer.

The student and I covered the same material as before in order to practice for his exam tomorrow. We covered linear functions and solving the system either by graphing, elimination and/or substitution. He came ready for business today and worked nonstop and made fewer mistakes this time. I gave him a few hours of relaxation and later in the evening sent him practice problems to do within an hour so he could work on them (as if it was the exam). At the hour mark, I sent him the answers so he can check how he did. I believe he will do well in his exam tomorrow, based on the work he put in today and the last time I saw him.