Award-Winning Private PSAT Tutoring in South Gate, CA

Today was our introductory session. After going over my background and style as a tutor, I reviewed the student's diagnostic test. I noticed she has difficulty with critical reading, geometry, translating word problems to equations and the free response math questions. I will be emailing the student shortly with her homework, but for now, she should take another test by our next session and get through as much of the math review as possible. She should grade the test and take notes on areas she has difficulty in and we will review them during our next session.

We went over specific geometric and algebraic topics found in the SAT. We first went over angular rotation, section area and special triangles. The student had some trouble dealing with these questions on his own (especially with questions dealing with rotation), but after a quick review he began to comprehend the questions and successfully complete them. We also went over percentage and inequalities during the second half of the session. This was more of a review for him as he has had seen such questions before (all he needed was a refresher on the slight tricks behind inequalities). We finished the session discussing the differences between the SAT and ACT in terms of material and rubric.

I talked with the student and his mom before the New Year about the possibility of beginning SAT/ACT tutoring with him, so I sat down with him to go through some online diagnostic tests from both the SAT and the ACT. He seems to like the SAT better and says it makes more sense to him, so I may have him complete an entire practice test on his own time. I do think I will have to completely review trigonometry with him for either test, as he claims he did not learn sine, cosine and tangent when he took geometry.

We went through the practice SAT that he took, going over strategy for future questions and reviewing skills that he might have forgotten. We got through the entirety of the math non-calculator section, and did one question of the calculator section. I recommended that he keep doing practice problems and practice tests as his primary form of preparation, especially for the math section.

We went through the problems on a practice Math test focusing on interpreting the graph of a line, how to calculate a weighted average, and how to convert units. Then, we reviewed the student's answers to a practice Writing test, focusing on proper punctuation, proper possessive pronoun, and the most logical placement of a sentence in the paragraph. I asked the student to do a complete practice Writing test and a complete practice Reading test under real time constraints for next time.

We went through the student's SAT math and writing sections from her test. She studied and did pretty well - about a 1310 on the SAT scale. She looked happy that she was able to do a lot more of the math problems. We still have about 15-20% of the math to go over next lesson, but beyond that, we'll work on taking practice tests for the PSAT. She's on track to getting a good score right now. We'll be focusing on some of the reading portion next lesson. I'm getting her to start creating an "problem log" to keep track of the kinds of mistakes that could be made on the actual test.