Certified Tutors From Delaware County Community College

We reviewed the geometry homework and covered topics like number lines & coordinates, volume, and functions. I asked the students to do the unfinished problem from the geometry packet, to do the first practice test, and to do an online PSAT diagnostic test and SAT diagnostic for next time.

This was my first tutoring session with this student, and she was very attentive. I went over a series of spelling words associated with 4th grade, and she missed a few. We did a read-aloud from a book she was reading and she went through math exercises really fast. Her writing could use a more organized structure and I want her to explain her answers orally as opposed to writing them down because there is a difference.

Yesterday's session was one of the most productive ones we've had so far. The student was still having some difficulty adding and subtracting negative numbers. More than anything else, that was what was causing him to get problems wrong. We focused on arithmetic with negative numbers for a large part of the session. We used the number line to help visualize those arithmetic problems. He was able to see the main idea behind negative numbers, and he will have it mastered soon. Aside from negatives, he is mostly able to solve equations correctly. He solved some difficult absolute-value equations by himself near the end of our session.

The student is a hard worker, and I was thrilled to hear about her progress over the summer. We went over some the practice problems she had completed for our session and reviewed strategies from last semester.

The student and I reviewed some of his homework. This was multiplying 2 digit numbers. I gave him reinforcement to keep his numbers organized and placing the 0 in the ones column when multiplying one factor by the tens column. Then we created a study guide for the properties of multiplication. He was able verbally explain the definitions and write them. He developed 3 out of 5 examples. Next, we discussed the order of operations, and he completed a few practice problems. I asked his grandmother to have him use the study guide and other topics for the unit test on Thursday.

The student had gotten the results from her November test, which were mixed. We spent our time today working on analogies. It was tedious work, but she made progress at understanding relationships between words.