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

"The student and I had a good session yesterday, moving on to solving two-step inequalities. The student sometimes voices that he thinks certain material will "take forever" to go over and so he wants to rush through the video and immediately start trying to figure out the homework problems himself. I tried pointing out to him that the math this involved was EXACTLY the same as the material on the quiz he just aced- solving two-step equations. The only difference is understanding how to work with the inequality symbol and how to graph the final answer. The student is now comfortable with combining like terms and using inverse operations to move terms from one side of the equation/inequality to the other, only making mistakes occasionally and recognizing them pretty quickly when I point out that something is not quite right. He struggled again just a little bit with understanding how 7<x is the same as x>7, which he needs to get in order to put his answers in the final form the teacher wants (his teacher wants the variable to always be on the left). I also noticed that when I would read a problem aloud from the book, for example "6 is greater than 7x plus 3," he would always look at the problem himself to look at which direction the inequality should go. So, we did some practice with reading basic statements like "x>6, 5<9...." etc. to really get him comfortable with what these signs mean. The student is doing well with graphing these inequalities on the number line, only needing a hand from me when he needed to graph x<2/3 and he wasn't sure what unit markers to use on the graph. We also reviewed again whether you get a positive or negative number when multiplying/dividing two negatives, two positives, or a negative and a positive. He remembered these very well and made fewer mistakes than Monday with it. Making good progress!"

"We reviewed problems about Gibbs free energy, defined entropy, enthalpy, endergonic and exergonic reactions, and watched a Bozeman science video discussing bioenergetics. We also had a tangential discussion about visual perception and tried a few experiments including the American flag after-image illusion, and identifying the blind spot in your eye where retinal neurons converge to the optic nerve."

"1/20: We discussed finding solutions of polynomial equations. 1/27: We reviewed homework on transformations of parent functions. The student had a good grasp on graphing the functions and using the calculator. He easily understood finding the line of symmetry and the vertex."

"We covered functions, graphing, long division, and factoring. The student has a great grasp of this material. This was mostly review for him. He felt good about the work and what we've been working on. We went over some basic strategies, including ways to quickly graph odd power versus even power functions. He had a few more homework problems from the book and also a study packet for him to work on. He always does well in our sessions, and today was no exception. "

"We covered the material for several of the practice-test questions. It's a lot of material to cover, so we only got through about 3 of the questions, but I think we're building a decent foundation so that she can be successful for the upcoming test."

"For this session, the student practiced various math skills. He was introduced to identifying lines, line segments, and rays. He also practiced his reading skills by reading Chapter 3 of Fudge-a-Mania and completing the story elements and plot map. He seems to be really enjoying this story and has been showing good improvement in recalling information, with several breaks to write down information during the chapter. Great job! "

"We talked about blood and the first half of the circulatory system, major components of blood, structure/type/function of red and white blood cells, how blood is made and it's regulatory hormones, the 3 Major events involved in blood clot formation and injury of blood vessels, blood types, major external and internal layers of the heart, heart structure (atrium and ventricles), blood flow pathway, and pacemaker cells."

"We went over an additional topic that the student was covering after his AP test: convolution integrals. This topic is really something that is usually covered in graduate-level math courses and there isn't too much use for it outside of abstract algebra, so we quickly went over the definitions and practiced it."