Certified Tutors From Maine Maritime Academy

Reviewed multiplication. Learned what decimals are and worked on adding, subtracting, and multiplying decimals. Started working on exponents.

We covered quadratic equations and the Pythagorean Theorem. The student struggled with identifying the a, b, and c terms from the quadratic equation, but she eventually got it. I showed her to pay attention to the coefficients in front of the terms so she wouldn't get mixed up. I left her homework from her workbook.

Today was about getting acquainted with the student and evaluating her knowledge base. We discussed limits, derivatives, and touched on linearization at the end. She is bright but has a very weak foundation, which explains her struggles with calculus. I think that as she begins to understand the material more, her attitude towards math will become more positive.

We did more problems on limits, including finding limits by eliminating common factors of fractions and checking right hand limit and left hand limit from graphs to determine if a limit exists. We also did problems to find x-intercepts and y-intercepts, vertical asymptotes, horizontal asymptotes, slant asymptotes, and domain and range of a given function.

We started our session by reviewing some stylistic and rhetorical devices. We then went through two of the practice essay prompts, identifying stylistic devices and analyzing how they were used by the author to further their argument. The student noticed elements such as repetition, parallelism, the connotation and denotation of particular words, as well as imagery and analogy. We then discussed how she might organize these observations into a coherent analytical narrative. We did this by discussing how she could outline her essays so that each observation builds on the last, culminating in an overarching argument about how they all connect. Next time, we will look at additional prompts and she will practice identifying rhetorical strategies and outlining on her own. In the following session, she will write another practice essay, using the skills she has been practicing.

The student and I went over his test review packet. The packet consisted of many derivative problems that involved product rule, quotient rule, and chain rule. Some of them asked us to find the equation of the tangent line at a specific point in slope intercept form. Other problems involved related rates and implicit differentiation. With the related rates problems, I explained that we need to appropriately identify what information is given to us and find out what the question is asking in order to find the answer.