Award-Winning Test Prep & Academic Tutoring in Westminster, MD

"We spent today's session reviewing a handful of Algebra II assignments, including topics in absolute inequalities, linear equations and associated word problems. The student was a bit wary of the material at first, but as we went through them and talked things out, she felt much more comfortable with approaching the questions. We reviewed a couple of assignments and started going through her test on algebraic expressions, equations and inequalities. Since we were running out of time, we focused on the more difficult/unfamiliar problems so that the student could attempt the rest of the test on her own. We will continue on tomorrow. Though she is uncomfortable with the material at first, as she is guided through a concept, she develops a stronger grasp of how to think about certain problems. With extra practice, she will be better off when she has to do homework on her own."

"In this session, we reviewed his recent polynomial quiz which covered topics such as factoring, word problems including systems of equations, and distribution. Although the student knows all of this material very well, he struggled on this test. After reviewing his work, it seems like test-taking anxiety was the biggest issue for him. Seeing as it was the first math exam of the year, he felt a lot of stress and pressure on the exam, which negatively impacted his performance. After going through the problems again with him, he was able to answer them correctly, given that he was not in a stressful setting. To help alleviate this issue, he and I will begin to work on simulating test-like conditions for some of our sessions together. He will surely benefit from getting more practice in a test-like setting, so that he doesn't feel as much pressure on his actual exams. After reviewing his exam, we then moved to his homework, which consisted of complex factoring of second-degree polynomials with large coefficients. Although this was challenging for him at the start, we reviewed the main strategy to employ and he picked it up very fast. Of the ~25 problems he had for homework, he was able to complete about 20 of them in about 30 minutes, which is a pretty fast rate already. He was very visibly pleased with his progress, and after assuring him that his exam performance will help him learn how to improve, he seemed to take a more positive tone on his experience. I look forward to helping him build on this experience, and I know he has the potential to hit his stride much like he did last year."

"During our session, we worked on factoring quadratic equations where the leading coefficient is not one. The student had a fairly strong grasp of the concept to begin with, so we spent a majority of the lesson learning the various ways to use a graphing calculator to check answers for this type of problem."