How Does School Year Tutoring Work?

Tutoring sessions are mostly driven by the student. Our goal is to help the student understand notes or complete assignments that a teacher/book has provided, in an encouraging setting to increase assignments, quizzes, or tests that they wish to work through.

– Where do you go to school?
– Who is teaching the class? What time of day is it held?
– How do you usually do in math classes? How is this class different for you?
– What kind of notes are provided?
– Are you involved in any school activities?
– What grade would satisfy you?

After working through the student’s questions for the rest of the hour, we’ll share our initial observations with the student/parent and invite them to consider whether or not they’d like to continue with tutoring after they return home.

Most students are comfortable with one hour per week. Students in the D/F range may prefer twice a week or more, at least initially until their grade rises.

How Does Summer Tutoring Work?

Like any time of year, summer tutoring depends on the student bringing a primary source of questions to ask (as opposed to the tutor creating lessons), and working on math almost daily. This is easily done for students taking a summer school course that is similar to the regular school year. It is more challenging for students who are not, and we generally recommend that students in this situation meet only for brief, fairly intense periods. Four examples of alternative approaches that have succeeded:

– The student has recently completed final exams and has obtained a copy of the final exam review packet to work through for corrective understanding. We meet at least 3 times a week for up to two weeks, or until the packet is completed, whichever comes first.

– The student has contacted the teacher that they will have in the fall, and obtained the first 2-4 weeks’ worth of notes or assignments. We meet at least 3 times a week, beginning two weeks prior to the first day of school.

– The student and tutor review the web site ixl.com to identify topics that they’d like to study. We work through several sample problems during the session, and the student is responsible for completing many more on their own in between sessions.

– Some schools identify a gap in student learning and enroll them in the aleks.com web site, a program that works similarly to ixl.com.