Certified Tutors From Lenoir Community College

We read a couple of passages from William Zinsser's "On Writing Well" - a book I gave the student a while back. We read the introduction to the 30th anniversary edition of the book, and most of the first chapter. As we discussed the group's definition of good writing, we also explored using passages from Hemingway, and from the Hemingway Competition. We discussed how he would frame his remarks, and timed how long it would take to read a few quotes from Zinsser. He said that the group definition was "a bit broad," leading us to a discussion of what types of writing were included (poetry, prose, fiction, nonfiction, memoir) and whether one definition would apply to many different genres.

The student and I worked on sections P2-P9 in preparation for his exam tomorrow. We studied rational exponents and radicals, simplifying algebraic expressions, factoring (including special formulas), working with rational expressions, and modeling with algebraic equations. He appears to have a high level of self-awareness about what he is doing well on and what he needs to study more; although we did several examples out of the possible problems about modeling with algebraic equations, he was going to complete the rest of the problems on his own and contact me if he needs further help. The problems have an added layer of difficulty because calculators are not allowed even for basic arithmetic. He is working hard to overcome this additional issue and is beginning to develop his own strategies for coping with the necessary work.

Today we primarily worked on vocabulary, which is an area that we hadn't done much with until now. I gave the student some word root lists to review and explained the "word detective" approach to choosing answers on the SAT vocab questions when he didn't know all the words. We then went through a good number of SAT difficult vocab questions so he could practice this method of refining his answer choices on these types of questions.

The student and I worked on word problems this session. He was able to complete about 14 of them, and only had some minor mistakes on 2 of them. He did very well with determining when to multiply or divide based on what the word problem was saying. He's getting much faster at solving the mathematical portion of these problems. We spent the last few minutes doing multiplication flashcards.

Student H: We went over some of the problems he got wrong on his diagnostic test. Concepts covered were mean/ median/ mode/ range, area/ perimeter of a rectangle and square, and algebra and distributing. Student A: We also went over some problems on his diagnostic test which included: prime/ composite, types of triangles, converting from fractions to decimals, and adding/ subtracting fractions with unlike denominators.

We reviewed classical and operant conditioning and generated examples of each. The student was initially struggling to grasp components of classical conditioning, but after generating and evaluating several examples, he came to understand the concepts and could even explain them to me. We went over operant conditioning and came up with examples, and this seemed to be a little easier to him. We discussed facets of operant and classical conditioning, such as stimulus generalization and the law of effect. We also started the chapter on memory. We reviewed and discussed elaborative rehearsal and began to discuss types of memory (procedural, declarative, semantic, and episodic). We will probably start with a brief review of these topics next week. The student has been creating flashcards and a chapter outline, as we discussed doing last session. I'm very happy he's been sticking to these strategies!