Certified Tutors From Delgado Community College

Math Concept covered - Comparing Decimals. For homework the student had to compare decimals using less than, greater than, or equal to. He had difficulty with the word problems, so I had to review some strategies with him. His attitude towards the review was positive and I gave him a practice sheet to compare decimals and order decimals from least to greatest, and greatest to least.

In this session, we solved systems of equations using the substitution method. Will understood the procedure itself fairly well, but struggled some with remembering to keep track of sings (which numbers are positive and negative). This meeting was productive because the student was focused and interested in the material. I showed the student the strategy of using parentheses liberally. For extra practice, I recommended reviewing each step of the substitution procedure before the next exam. The student appears to be improving with respect to his algebra skills, so I would absolutely say that he is progressing.

We covered graphing and x-y relationships. The student moves too quickly and confidently through that which he finds easy and is too reticent to work through that which he finds tough. We worked on how to properly establish x-y relationships.

In today's session we focused solely on optimization problems. They are kind of difficult to tackle and get started on because none of them look the same and there is no set pattern to completing them. The student's main difficulty is in getting started, so we tried to put an emphasis on figuring out what the problem is actually asking, then coming up with a plan to solve the problem based on the information given. This really is a tough section, but I definitely saw an improvement the more we practiced. He has a test tomorrow so we'll see how he does then continue on this topic from there.

I went over basics of acid and base reactions, stoichiometry (molarity and solutions), and empirical and molecular formulas. In addition to the concepts, I presented examples to illustrate how the concepts work in conjunction with one another.

Today, the student and I worked through concepts and material that will be appearing tomorrow on his exam. He did very well on the last exam, and feels just as confident with this exam. We covered change of enthalpy reactions, and how the sign of the outcome infers if it is endothermic or exothermic. We also discussed electron configuration, and wave energy calculations. I believe he will do great on the exam tomorrow!