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We spent most of the session going over the student's diagnostic test. We also began to discuss some strategies based on the results of the diagnostic. I plan to come up with more concrete strategies as I continue to learn the student's strengths and weaknesses where the ACT is concerned.

The student and I spent the first half of the session reviewing Chapter 1-8 of the second book in A Tale of Two Cities.  We not only covered content, but looked at the significance of the literary elements.  We spent the latter half of the session reviewing on his history paper.  The student still needed to research some aspects of the Rwandan genocide and the conflict in Sudan so we discussed an outline of the points that he will address and found the relevant information in his books/online.  He finished the first half of the outline.  The student will complete the outline and start working on his paper by the next session so I can help him review it.

The student and I went over the questions he got wrong on his last test, which primarily included factorials and the Bernoulli theorem. We talked about the sampling distribution for normal and non-normal populations, and practiced estimating the population mean from a sample (or multiple samples), as well as the standard deviation (for small samples and samples greater than 30). We discussed why estimates of the mean approach the true mean as you take more and more samples, and as the sample size increases. We ended by briefly introducing confidence intervals, and why it can be beneficial to predict parameters based on an interval rather than a point estimate.

We  went through two chapters covering the cell and its components. We filled out a study guide that will hopefully help studying Monday night when we cannot meet. I think he will catch up easily, it just takes a few times to see the material to start remembering it a little better. Once he gets the main terms down, the concepts and processes will be easier to understand.

In my session with the student today we finished all of her study guide for her psychology exam, and went through the practice quizzes provided by the textbook website. There was a lot of material for the first exam, and I wanted to make sure the student wasn't feeling overwhelmed by it. She ended up getting a 95% on the online exam, so for her next test we will take the same successful approach.

Today we reviewed a writing prompt the student had started over the weekend.  Overall, he did a really good job, so I pointed out just a few things that could make his writing stronger (new paragraphs, using the same tense, and punctuation).  We also worked on synonyms.  I asked him to have flashcards for next time so that we can work more intensely on vocab.