Certified Tutors From University of Puerto Rico-Humacao

During this session, the student and I reviewed his homework which was several sentences using the verb ser and estar. Since he has been struggling with those verbs due to their difficulties, I recommended him to continue practicing until he understands completely their uses. It is totally understandable why he is having a hard time with such verbs, since in English the verb to be doesn't have two forms as it does in Spanish. However, the student is doing very well even though he is struggling with these two verb tenses. He is always very optimistic and questions everything. It is always very rewarding seeing him happy to be acquiring more and more knowledge of Spanish.

Today we worked on quadratic functions. Specifically, we worked on finding the vertex of a parabola and using that to find the graph and the roots. We covered how this ties into completing the square. We worked several examples of this. Finally, we introduced the topic of the quadratic formula and where it comes from.

The student and I covered most of the grammar concepts that are tested on the ACT English section. He is obviously a bright student, and he is quick to understand when colloquially spoken English needs to be corrected with proper grammar. He just needs some practice to learn and apply the rules of grammar. I've assigned some practice problems for the concepts we covered. We will pick back up and continue where we left off in the next session.

We had a good session today. We worked on preparing the student for his test on Friday. I suggested extending the sessions in the future when the material is difficult. We worked on ratios, literal equations, and mixed rate problems. He initially needed some help on these, but once we worked on the fundamentals, he was doing all the parts well. We may go over some things tomorrow before his test.

We looked for an article to integrate into the student's paper and read through key sections of the article together. We discussed its relevance and vocabulary. We then talked about how and where she might integrate it in her own work.

The student and I worked on his writing skills. He is in need of a lot of work in this area. I had him rewrite some work I had given him previously. He also completed his reading comprehension assignment.