Certified Tutors From Des Moines Area Community College

Today we talked a bit more about the upcoming history assignment the student has been gearing up for. I think it will be a good project for him to show his teacher that he is willing to put in the effort to get the grade - he seems genuinely interested in the research aspect of his task and has been talking to the teacher about possible sources. He also continues to ask good questions about the subject - I advised him strongly to bring more questions into the classroom! I was very happy to learn he got a 97% on an English test we prepared for together. He was proud of the fact that he was one of the few in the class to correctly identify "when" as a conjunction, after we specifically discussed it while looking over the study guide. Lastly, we made some sentences about Spanish fashion and had a more informal conversation about school in general. The student was very active and engaged throughout our time together.

The student and I spent this session working on a special project that her geometry teacher assigned. This covered the law of proportionality, which she needed to make a PowerPoint presentation on. We worked on the sections of this assignment, first defining it in terms of math and coming up with example problems, then highlighting how this law applies in the world. The student did well coming up with examples for each of these topics.

The student and I covered solving systems of equations by graphing and elimination. I brought a worksheet to practice graphing systems of equations and finding the coordinates where the two lines intersect. We also went over questions from her textbook including word problems, to consolidate her understanding and align the practice I brought with problems she is more likely to see in class. We also started going over solving systems of equations via substitution. We will aim to finish systems of equations via substitution and elimination in the next two tutoring sessions. She is very pleasant to work with! She communicates very openly regarding which concepts she is struggling with and which ones she understands. She demonstrates understanding of solving for variables which is very helpful in reviewing systems of equations. We will continue to work on her algebra skills to prepare optimally for algebra II in the fall.

The student struggled a bit with the reading comprehension, though RC is still his best category. His scores have definitely gone up in recent weeks. We planned on finishing going over this week's tests on Sunday at 12:30.

Today, the student and I worked on addressing some of the issues in her portfolio that were raised as areas of concern by the feedback from her professors. We started by making a detailed plan for the extra research that she will need to do, and most importantly, how to make it relevant to her argument. Today, we specifically looked at getting figures on a company's competitors (which her professors have asked for), and I suggested graphing and grouping the companies according to each of the different fields. The key issue, which I stressed to her, is making all of the research relevant to her case study. I have told her to be explicit and blunt when explaining why she has included it, and then we can finesse the writing at a later stage. We also tracked the beginning of the twitter backlash, which illustrates her argument about it turning into a media crisis.

In our first session, the student shared with me the results of his diagnostic test. He said his weakest areas are fractions/ decimals and plane geometry. We spent the session doing questions in these areas. I think he is doing much better with plane geometry questions and with more practice should not have any trouble with these questions. However, he is still very weak with fractions, decimals, and probability so we will need to practice these much more.