Certified Tutors From University of Phoenix-San Antonio Campus

We spent some time catching up on his last week and what he did over the holiday weekend. I supervised him while he completed a math worksheet on the Pythagorean Theorem and we brainstormed ideas for his "mission patch" assignment for Science class. He then drew the patch while we chatted about space. We finished by doing a writing exercise.

Today the student and I reviewed her homework, some of which was leftover from last week. The major topics we covered all dealt with fractions and decimals. Specifically, we worked on simplifying fractions and equations, the distributive property of equality, the associative property of equality, and the multiplication property of equality. She seems to have no problem with these questions--she knows exactly what the question is asking her to do, and she knows exactly how to go about solving the problem. After we finished her homework, I had her go back and work on a few of the longer problems again and do them as slowly as she possibly could. At every single step along the way, I had her make sure that the mathematical operations that needed to be performed were done so, and that they were the correct operation (i.e. multiplying both terms rather than multiplying one and adding the other, which is a common mistake in these types of problems). I also had her check each term of each line of each problem as she solved it, again moving as slowly as possible. As I mentioned last week, she is extremely bright, and so she sometimes thinks a bit too far ahead when solving a problem, which can cause her to slip up and make a minor error. All told, I tried to slow her down in order to train her brain to move over each problem one step at a time, which will in turn trigger a mental alarm if something doesn't work out. All of this is to help her slow down, concentrate on each step of the problem, and eliminate the common errors that have given her problems. She seemed to think our extra practice helped, which I was very happy to hear.

We spent 60 minutes on geometry and 30 minutes on chemistry tonight. In geometry, we reviewed, practiced, and applied the Pythagorean theorem, families of right triangles and special cases of right triangles. We reviewed problems from section 9.7 and 9.8. In chemistry, we looked at entropy and changes of energy in reactions, focusing on incorporating heat of vaporization/fusion in more complex problems.

The student did an awesome job today. He asked me to make him a practice test covering everything he has done so far to prepare for his final exam. He did a great job. I advised him to practice using some of his old worksheets and also be aware of the work he is doing.

I'm so impressed with the girls' progress. Students M and D have both mastered a large portion of the Algebra 2 concepts. Today I introduced them to conic sections. We discussed some of the real life instances of conics, then dove into circles. I also introduced ellipses towards the end of our session. Next week we'll talk about hyperbolas and then parabolas if we have time. Student N has mastered over 80% of the probability and statistics concepts. I was able to clarify the empirical rule, expected values, and probability distributions. She also reviewed conditional probability. I think all three girls are doing a fantastic job and they'll have a real head start on their math for the coming school year.

The student has been getting better with her fluency. She read so well today! She went through the book quickly and had personality while reading. We worked on her spelling words. We also worked on her math. She used her fingers to solve the problems. I helped her understand the greater than and less than concepts.