A senior high school student struggled with grade 11 math. Over two years of tutoring with her Teachers on Call tutor, she improved her grades by leaps and bounds, and gained enough confidence to enjoy the subject matter.
Student Challenge & Goals
This high-school student was struggling after transitioning from grade 10 academic math to grade 11 university math. The leap in difficulty was more than she had anticipated, and she was also challenged that her math teacher's style in grade 11 was different from her previous teacher's style in grade 10.
Chemistry and Physics help were also requested periodically in addition to math support. Her overall goal was to improve her math mark from the 50-60% range in early grade 11 to a 90% range by grade 12 needed for her to be able to attend her choice of universities.
How We Helped
The first thing our tutor worked on was building up her confidence in math, as her sudden drop in marks from grade 10 to grade 11 distressed her greatly. Most of the time was initially devoted to developing proper mathematical forms and presentation in order to meet the expectations of the new teacher. After focusing on getting a few strong quiz and test results, our tutor went back and reviewed the math fundamentals from grade 10 to identify as she was working through the grade 11 math curriculum.
Recurring mistakes identified were discussed in order to work through underlying misconceptions that needed to be corrected. When the student wanted to focus sessions on chemistry and physics, our tutor would try to connect the topics together for her. What she learned about vectors in physics could be applied in calculus. Logarithms in advanced functions were briefly touched on in chemistry acid/base. By addressing misconceptions and looking at the connection between the subjects, the student was able to remember recall concepts easier and build on them with ease.
Student Results
We are proud to share that this student went from disliking math and science because it was too challenging to a point where she was confident in her work and answers. Over two years of consistent math and science tutoring, her grades did reach the 90% range and she was successful in gaining acceptance to the program of her choice.
