Award-Winning Test Prep & Academic Tutoring in Crestwood, KY

"Today, the student and I worked on constructing scale diagrams and reviewed some basic rules of geometry. Specifically, we reviewed the definitions of parallel, perpendicular, and the height of a shape (trapezoid, triangle, rectangle). He is struggling with this and seems to need some help conceptualizing the shapes, but he was getting better as the session progressed. The student also indicated that he was having trouble with the coordinate plane, so we did some practice review problems on that. He seems to understand the concept pretty well, but may make simple mistakes sometimes. Continuing to practice will be beneficial. We reviewed the circle equations (d=2r, c=pi d), and we will have to review this again to make sure it sticks permanently. For study skills, we worked on isolating the information that is needed from a question by writing it down. We also worked on checking our work by going over these points once we have our answer. I've noticed that sometimes the student gets caught up in doing a problem a certain way and has trouble seeing it from a different angle. I'm going to figure out some strategies that I can use to help him take a step back, refresh, and look at a problem with fresh eyes. Overall, he has a great attitude and is not afraid to try things that he knows are hard, and will keep working at something until he understands it."

"We reviewed concepts discussed in the student's class, specifically the product rule and antiderivatives. The product rule she caught on to very quickly. We did several practice problems. She had no problem with the simple product rule problems. The more complex problems she seemed nervous about, but once she broke the problems down she didn't have any trouble solving them. Throughout the practice problems, I'd throw in other types of derivative problems to make sure she was thinking about derivatives in general and not just the product rule. This threw her off at first, but then she started thinking beyond the specific topic we were addressing, which is what I was hoping. For the antiderivatives, we discussed conceptually what it is and then did several practice problems. I slowly combined these practice problems with our previous discussion of differentials, such that she solved her first differential equations, without even knowing what a differential equation is. I was very happy that she caught on to the concept quickly. Throughout the practice problems, I noticed some types of derivatives that she hasn't learned yet. I'm assuming they'll be covered in future classes, but if not, then I'll want to focus more time on them during our sessions, so we'll see how those topics evolve in the class. I also introduced the concept of local extrema and using the derivative as a tool for finding and characterizing extrema. "