Award-Winning Test Prep & Academic Tutoring in Edwardsville, IL

"The student and I started the session with looking closely at a quiz he took and which he scored well on. We looked at the three questions he missed on a twenty-six question quiz and formulated strategies on how to answer "all of the following except" quiz questions, since two of the questions he missed were comprised of "all of the following except" questions. Aside from these type of questions, he performed very well, and at a glance at this quiz I could tell that he had studied hard. After we looked at the quiz, he then wrote the first draft of his AP World History essay on the contrasts between the ancient Greeks and the Persian Empire. There were specific requirements for the assignment, and he fulfilled them all: describe the political and cultural life of the Greeks in contrast with the Persians; describe the Royal Road of the Persian Empire, what its functions were, and its advantages and details; use the key words coinage, infrastructure, and caravan; describe Greece's culture, characteristics, and how Greek city-states/ poleis formed an early form of democracy. I helped the student with utilizing the "speech" mechanism on his school pad, and he found it to be very helpful as an adjunct to reading the text of his class history book as well. We went further into the contrasts between the two civilizations and wrote the main body and conclusion for his draft with main points we discovered, such as the Greek city-states and Greece as a whole being a fraction of the population size of the huge population of the Persian Empire. We also wrote how the Greek poleis started as aristocracies in government but then became democracies as all classes were able to afford armor for conscription into the Greek armies, whereas the Persian Empire was a monarchy and part theocracy based on an autocratic god-king. We also detailed how the Greeks were exclusive of foreigners while the Persian Empire was very inclusive, appreciative, adoptive, and admirable of foreign cultures that they conquered and how the Greeks at the time didn't expand into an empire since they were never centralized while the centralized Persians expanded into a vast empire with a communication network and early "postal system." I then suggested to the student that he email his first draft to his teacher for input and advice, to seek what his teacher is looking for in this assignment. He will then rewrite the paper, writing for his teacher's ideal for this essay. A productive session where the student learned about the social, political, cultural, and economic contrasts of two civilizations that were very different stories in the human record. We also discussed and made history fun and enlightening by musing about a possible third invasion of Greece by the Persian army during the Greco-Persian Wars and also discussed the Persian god-king Darius, a very interesting historical figure."

"We went over the student's homework on the applications of derivatives, which included the EVT, IVT, optimization, and an introduction to antiderivatives. During our session, I explained the concepts of the section, and he worked on the assignment. "

"The student and I covered Martin Luther for social studies, we worked on the cell and organelles for science, and she briefly worked on some English homework. She has a science quiz tomorrow and I think she is well prepared after our session."

"The student and I spent today working on percentages, some algebraic concepts, analogies, and reading comprehension. He showed progress in some of the math concepts and seemed to catch on to the analogies pretty quickly. We'll keep working with him to get these strategies to be more second nature for him."

"Today, the student and I covered polygon types and genetics. She had a great attitude as always, and she knew most of her polygons. For genetics, she struggled with a few concepts, but she understood easily after I used her pet dogs as examples. I encouraged her to study the material further, and I look forward to seeing her results. "

"The student had quite a bit of homework questions to answer for chemistry. They were covering thermodynamics, phase transitions, and intermolecular forces. We devoted some time going over the aspects of thermodynamics and phase transitions that he had trouble with as he worked through questions that he couldn't answer. We also placed specific focus on learning intermolecular forces and their relationship with kinetic energy and phase changes. While he was confused initially, after explaining a couple of times with the use pictures and diagrams, he was able to understand how the concepts he was learning translate to reality. Afterwards, he had no trouble with the difficult questions, but he continued to work through as many as possible so that he could reinforce the takeaways from this chapter. "

"What concepts did you cover specifically? Classifying numbers (real, rational, irrational, and whole numbers), number line, square roots, cube roots, Pythagorean theorem, Special Right Triangles. Did you leave them with any extra practice? Algebra 1 section. Any concerns or wins from this session? Win. The student is a real treat to tutor. She is a very hard working student. She wants to do well. What was the student's attitude toward the material that was reviewed? Excellent."

"We focused this session on going through his current homework assignment which continued to deal with logarithmic properties. The work was similar to homework that the student had already done, and he was already comfortable with most of the concepts being covered, so we put particular emphasis on utilizing the power rule of logarithms and utilizing the log as an inverse of the exponential function for evaluation, as these were the two topics he was slightly less comfortable with. We also discussed how to convert a decimal into a fraction and how to utilize the change of base formula for logarithms. He seemed comfortable with these topics and should be well prepared for some upcoming work involving solving logarithmic equations. "