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

Tonight the student shared with me the exciting news that she got an 89 on a very difficult fractions test two weeks ago. She seemed quite happy about her efforts as am I! Tonight we specifically covered Algebra. She has just begun reviewing Algebra in school. Tonight we reviewed through the first two sections of algebra, her homework which was recently completed, and we worked on homework that is due for tomorrow. We reviewed the concept that a letter can be substituted to represent an unknown number. I devised some quick word problems associating the necessity to use a letter in place of a number. She did a great job of these as she began writing our algebraic equations. She needed help with division problems presented to her in a form of what looked to be like a fraction. I reviewed this with her and explained she would be seeing a lot of division in this format from that point forward. I went back to fractions with her and explained that she in fact completed division problems in this format without realizing. When she made the connection, she realized she had no reason to worry. She did a great job on these problems tonight. She showed some struggle with problems stating show the equation of "Subtract 5 from X" or "Subtract A from B". After breaking down the problem with her and discussing the language being used here, and providing examples she expressed a great deal of understanding and was able to self correct. She did a great job on the problems asking her to add up the letters "1B + 4B". She is headed in the right direction with this new math section and seems to be doing a great job.

The student and I had a pretty low key session today. He did all of the homework I gave him, which was a big win. We went over division and multiplication at the beginning of our session. I plan to review some every session until he has become fully confident in his mastery. Then we went on to basic geometry. We practiced finding the perimeter and area of squares, rectangles, and triangles, and attempted right triangles. He doesn't have to know those just yet, but I wanted to introduce it, since I know it takes him a bit longer to grasp new concepts. It was a bit confusing, so we didn't go past diagrams, but he is a very visual learner so we will try a more hands on approach in the future. We talked about his literary enemy (King Arthur) and came to a compromise on the book - he will leave it at our study sessions and will read at least ten pages out loud with me every session. But, since I wanted him reading on his own, I gave him a few criteria so that he could pick out a book he enjoyed, that I could agree on. We established that it had to be a regular chapter book, it had to have at least a certain length, and a certain number of words per page. Wednesday is library day, so he said he'd have the book on Thursday. We also established that I would give him homework once a week on Thursday to have done for Tuesdays.

I spent the entire session working with the student on math. The student and I went over perimeter and area of rectangles and squares. We worked on note taking as well as solving problems.

Today's session was a little different than usual, because the student had just had a math test today and no new subject material to go over. Instead, we looked ahead to future material and worked on that. This new section was about percents and their relationship to fractions and decimals. He picked this material up very quickly, I'm sure partially due to the fact that he was proficient in ratios and proportions. I think that he'll be ready for the coming material in his math class because of this. For the last half of the session, I had prepared some more challenging math questions for him that built upon past topics in his class. We worked through six of these questions, a few of which he really had to work for. For future sessions, I will create more of these challenging problems to test his ability to apply his class material to more advanced problems.

We went over examples of position, velocity, and acceleration vectors. We were able to complete most of the problems.

The student and I reviewed for a test he is having in math. The test covers arithmetic and geometric sequences and series and also the binomial theorem. He did part of his review packet himself; the questions he did by himself he did correctly. There was one question that asked him to find the partial sum of a geometric series. He knew how to do it but waited to see if there was a formula he could use instead. Unfortunately, there was not, but he was able to do the problem long hand. He did well with the binomial theorem problems as well. His biggest challenge was making sure he carried his signs properly (he needs to check his work to make sure he doesn't give up points for simple mistakes). He had some trouble with geometric sequences; we went over those problems carefully and also did some extra practice from the practice problems and his other review sheets. He was a little confused by problems where he had to rearrange the formula in order to solve for the missing variable. We discussed how to do those problems. Before we ended our sessions, I told him to work on the other practice sheets he had before his test. Also, on the test, to read the questions carefully, check to make sure he carried signs correctly, and to check his arithmetic. He is doing very well; he scored a 92 on his last quiz.