Certified Tutors From Case Western Reserve University

Today we went over line segments and different types of collinear and coplanar statements. We also solidified her understanding of the Hardy-Weinberg equation in Biology. Great effort and work today!

We worked on graphing inequalities. We also found the solutions of multiple equations, and graphed equations in slope intercept form. We used test points to insure that the derived solutions meet the inequality requirements.

The student and I continued to work on word problems involving unit conversions. The most difficult part is figuring out what the problem is asking and what steps to take to solve the problem. The student has a hard time analyzing the given information and deciphering what the problem is asking. So, I decided to model my thought process in a few problems to show him.

The student and I had our first session this morning to discuss and look over a statement of intent she is writing as part of her application to an online Master's program. Her application has the added challenge of having to visit the University's admissions office to write the statement in person - a reasonable but nevertheless daunting challenge for a TESOL program. Her goal today was to put together a detailed outline of how she should compose this statement. She particularly wanted some guidance in framing and writing a 5-paragraph response in English. Her English skills are well developed, so we spent most of our time on paragraph and body structure, and less time on grammar and vocabulary. After compiling an outline, we agreed that the student would email me her practice draft sometime today for comment.

I showed the student how propositional logic applies to answering certain LSAT question, and we looked also at informal fallacies.

The first and second sessions were primarily about review of geometrical and algebraic concepts, as well as SAT test-taking strategies. Problems were taken from the student's SAT blue book as well as from materials of my own. He seems to be grasping the concepts quite well, although he struggles a bit more with wordy problems that provide a lot of information. His math computation abilities, however, seem to be very good. The emphasis of session 3, as well as future sessions, will be to drill practice test after practice test for math. I have provided a workbook with 12 different SAT math tests, and the goal is to get the student as familiar with as many of those tests as possible. During session 3 today, we went over many problems from test 1 in the workbook. This will be the goal from here on out--he will finish one or more sections from a practice test for homework, we will go over them during the tutoring sessions, and then spend the remaining time taking additional sections of the test. He has a great attitude--he seems genuinely interested in the material and he is certainly learning. As long as he keeps up with working through problems (which I've assigned) on his own, he will be just fine.