Award-Winning Test Prep & Academic Tutoring in Camarillo, CA

"The student said he needed help with finding percentages in general math and finding areas and volumes in geometry. We first created a chart that shows the relationship between fractions, decimals, and percents using quarters and halves of $1.00 (e.g., 1/4 = 1 divided by 4 = .25 (a quarter) = 25% of $1.00), which I find useful in understanding percents, since it relates $1.00 to 100%, something with which students always have prior knowledge due to handling money. We then viewed a PowerPoint on understanding percents that expanded on those ideas by showing how "per-cent" means "out-of-100," and illustrating how the decimal point moves two places to the left when converting a fraction over 100 to a decimal, because you are dividing by 100 (which works the opposite way when multiplying by 100). Also, we looked at word problems where "What % of a is b?" can be represented as ax=b and "A is what percent of b?" can be represented as a=xb. As a generally useful technique, I showed the student how "is over of equals percent over 100," which works with turning any percent word problem into an equivalent pair of ratios which can be cross-multiplied, and then solved by isolating the variable. Finally, we looked at a few formulas for calculating area and volume of various polygons with some sketches of how they work. I also showed the student an excellent online resource for getting a few of the formulas (with explanations) that his math teachers are likely to expect him to know."

"We worked on writing the formula for arithmetic sequences and finding their sums. The student did great with this section."