Certified Tutors From Greenville Technical College

During this tutoring session, I helped the student prepare for an upcoming math test on fractions. We began by completing a "subtracting un-equivalent fractions" worksheet. The student breezed through this worksheet without any help and she got all the questions correct. Then we went over a four page review packet her teacher had sent home. She had to compare fractions and order a set of three fractions from least to greatest. At first, she could not remember how to do this. She did her best in ordering them, but she got about half incorrect. I helped her visualize the fractions by drawing them in circles and having her compare them. She was able to correct her mistakes, and the second time she got them all right. In another section she had to complete word problems which she completed correctly with minimal help. The last activity we looked at was her CML worksheet. She had to choose three word problems from each side of the page. She read through a couple of the word problems and found them a little difficult. I helped her through them by showing her that she could draw charts and pictures to figure out the answers and she might have to do a lot of trial and error until she got the correct numbers. It took a long time to complete this worksheet. Overall, she did well during this session but she still needs to review how to order fractions from least to greatest. I will submit three review quizzes on her website for more practice.

The student and I discussed his performance on his test. He felt confident about his overall performance and was able to answer all the questions to the best of his ability. Afterwards, we then reviewed his class project and prepared some questions to ask his teacher to ensure he has all the information necessary to complete the project.

We first went over the logical reasoning questions that the student missed or struggled with from his most recent practice test. We identified that one issue he had been having is just reasoning through longer or complex arguments. As a strategy in response to that, he is planning to default to reading through those arguments twice to grasp them, and to focus just on understanding the conclusion if all of the details of the reasoning aren't clear to him. After that, we did a reading comp exercise where he answered the questions without reading the passage, which showed him that he should have confidence that he knows how to navigate answer types very well: in all cases, he could cut it down to 2 options (one of which was correct) without even reading the passage. He can now apply that intuitive sense and confidence to other reading passages.

We worked on the student's advisory project, reading select passages from The Norton Reader and analyzing them using the rubric provided by his instructor. (Are they primarily 1) expository, 2) argumentative, 3) descriptive, or 4) narrative?) He has a new reading assignment for the term: two books, with a presentation to the class on a particular chapter or selection from the book. The books are "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston (his assignment will cover chapter 10), and "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind" by William Kamkwamba (assignment not yet known).

The main topics of this session were derivatives and integrals of inverse trig functions and of logarithms. I began by explaining that it is generally easier to re-derive inverse-trig functions on the spot using the Pythagorean triangle rather than memorizing them. After showing her this, the student seemed to get the hang of these types of problems. At the end of the session, we worked through some integrals that required some algebra tricks to solve.

The student and I went over review materials for his upcoming test. There is a lot of material to review, and he is able to do all of the tasks. He's got a great attitude and is going to practice more at home for our next session.