Certified Tutors From Trinity Baptist College

This week the student and I worked on converting improper fractions into mixed fractions. She quickly understood how to solve the problems I gave her, and then we continued working on her math league problems. Her progress remains steady as she's a very bright student.

We went over logarithms some more and finding multiple ways to solve a logarithm. This includes changing exponents into constants as well as raising both sides to a power. We also went over constant of proportionality given a function and two x-boundaries. This wasn't very difficult for the student to understand since it isn't a very difficult subject. We also went over Descartes' rule of signs and how that can be used to determine the total number of zeroes in a polynomial expression. We went over how to use PNI charts to determine this. This was slightly more difficult for her but by the end she understood it pretty well. We also went over log-log and semilog plots and how those are employed. We finally went over limits and how those can apply to logarithms. Overall it was a very productive session.

We began this session by checking in with the student and his organizational tactics since we last met. He had managed to write in his planner for only one day, so we discussed the importance of that and how it helps with organization and studying. I then let him decide what work he wanted to work on during this time, and he chose his science study guide. After many discussions about studying styles, I created a study handout for him to use along with his study guide. I had him practice highlighting the most important information in his notes, and then we reviewed the best ways to study and be sure that he was prepared for his test on Friday. His actual content knowledge and ability to work through problems is great -- he just needs to stay on top of the organization (planner, note-taking, etc.). I plan on looking at his binders (for organization and highlighting) and planner (for assignments) at the start of every session.

This session primarily focused on the student's language arts class. Together, we looked at a writing that was assigned this recent Friday on the film Star Wars and how it ties in and parallels the mythologist and folklorist Joseph Campbell's Heroic Cycle and the Hero's Journey. The student had already written the main body of the assignment, which was comprised of a synopsis with associations of plot points in the film to stages in the Heroic Cycle/ monomyth (i.e. status quo, assistance I, call to adventure, assistance II, trials, approach, resolution, new life, etc.). I helped him write more of an introductory paragraph which also mentioned other pop culture phenomena that can certainly fit into Joseph Campbell's Heroic Cycle (i.e. Lord of the Rings, Star Trek). After this Star Wars/ Joseph Campbell paper for his language arts class, we then worked on his studying of Homer's The Odyssey. We read parts of it, characterizing Odysseus and reading the important first stanza of the epic poem since it contains a preview and foreshadowing of what is to occur in the narrative. We also created notes on certain topics pertaining to The Odyssey that his teacher specified in an Odyssey packet, such as The Trojan War, Odysseus, Gods and Goddesses in the Odyssey, The Epic Hero, and the Epic Poem. He also wrote more of a conclusion paragraph for the assignment, mentioning other epic poems in literature such as Beowulf and The Aeneid, and other main themes of the Odyssey, such as loyalty and the keeping alive of memory. For the rest of the session, we briefly looked at his DBQ assignment for his AP History class and I conducted a vocal "quiz" on the main philosophies and religions of ancient times from his textbook (i.e. Confucianism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Socratic philosophy, Taoism, Hinduism). The student performed great on this spur-of-the-moment "quiz" as I gave the main ideas/ tenets of each and he identified each. A good session.

In the session today we covered combinations and permutations. Overall the student was very comfortable with the information, so we began to review for her midterms that will be in December. For the review we went over matrices, and will continue with those tomorrow as well.

Today was my last session with the boys. Student A worked on synonyms and sentence completion. He did not do great on his first round of sentence completion, but ended the session by getting 22/23 correct on another exercise. Student B and I worked on some holes he has on functions, percent change and variables.