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The student and I met for our final ACT prep session, although he will have one final session prior to taking the ACT. We began by reviewing his practice essay and then continued by studying strategies for the math section, focusing particularly on Backsolving and Substitution. We did a vocabulary review and finished the session by covering Chapter 10: Final Review, which refreshed many of the strategies and skills we have worked on together, as well as covering tips for what to do in the final days leading up to the test, as well as the day of the test itself.

The student and I began chapter 6, which includes imperfect and future forms of the verb "to be" (sum, esse) and present, imperfect and future forms of "to be able" (possum, posse).  There are a lot of drills and exercises in this chapter, but I'm hoping to get through as much of it as possible during our last two sessions next week.  It will depend on how much he can work over this next week.

The student and I began his final unit today, transitioning to real calculus as we studied the slope-limit definition of derivatives, theorems for differentiating functions, and applying derivatives to graphing. With a combination of the textbook's and my explanations, the student developed a good understanding of the concepts; indeed, all of his struggles today were minor and easily correctable, and most of those struggles were algebraic mistakes, not analytic. We also finished a few of the test-review problems together. On Wednesday, we will continue the unit, hopefully finishing within two or three more sessions.

Topics Covered: Energy & Work Progress: We reviewed material in preparation for an exam the student has tomorrow, 11/15. She has a great understanding of the principles but needs reminding of the relationships between them. For instance, she understands what kinetic and potential energies are but needed to be reminded that work is also energy, just a change in energy. We touched on some general algebraic relationships that emphasize this relationship and she seemed to pick up on it quite well.

The student and I met for the last time to review for her final exam. Her final exam is non-comprehensive and it covers topics including Lewis structures, resonance, the hybridization of elements, formal charges, and other topics from chapter nine and ten. We spent the beginning part discussing the concepts behind these topics. We worked out Lewis structure diagrams and also looked at the periodic trends. We also looked at conditions for ionic and covalent bonds being formed. Overall, I believe with another review of the chapters she will be sufficiently prepared for the final exam.

Student has a test tomorrow so session used to review. Topics included measurement of a line, estimates and rounding, multiplication and some long division, learning decimal places. Student did very well on review in class. Cleaned up some mistakes and worked extensively on multiplication of double digit numbers