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

"Today, I met with the student to have a review session for his exam tomorrow. We covered definite vs. indefinite integrals, Simpson's Rule, Trapezoid Rule, finding functions from second derivatives with initial values, and ended with determining convergence or divergence of series."

"We corrected the student's group test and reviewed for her individual test on chapter 6. She did fairly well in working through her group test, and it turned out that she was not directly responsible for half of the mistakes on the test. She only missed one problem as a consequence of improper technique. After we reviewed her test, I asked her to identify the most intimidating problem types from her chapter 6 review and the group test, and I talked her through identifying the technical names of those types of problems. Once we had established technical language, I showed her how to look up practice problems by type online. We then proceeded to find a wide variety of practice problems for her review. Predominantly, we practiced manipulating logarithms and exponents, as she found those types of problems most confusing. We practiced graphing logarithmic and exponential functions, solving logarithmic and exponential equations, and deriving logarithmic and exponential functions from a set of points and an asymptote. This allowed her to exercise her skill in manipulating logarithmic and exponential expressions in a variety of circumstances. We also spent a good deal of time reviewing how to graph systems of inequalities, and how to identify the vertex of a parabolic function by completing the square. She had more difficulty with the latter concept, but she caught on fairly quickly, and had correctly completed squares several times before we ran out of time. I encouraged her to continue seeking practice problems after our session in order to increase her comfort level. I also encouraged her not to negatively judge herself for anything she forgets, and to attempt to guide herself to forgotten information via the kinds of questions that I used to help her learn. "