As a teacher candidate, I had the opportunity to tutor middle school students in the Los Angeles

Area. The students varied in mathematics skills. Most of the students are in 6th grade at the time

of the tutoring. In the five weekend, I tutored at the middle school four students were constant in

their attendance. These four youth did not have to be at their school on a Saturday. They chose to

be there to educate themselves better. Though to be honest, they did spend time with their friends

during that time. There was staff who tutored the student. These young college students were

also from Cal State University Dominguez Hills. On any given Saturday there would be two

volunteers that were entering a credential program after that semester was over. I was one of

them. The director of the Program was a retired school administrator and currently worked for

CSUDH. The director would brief me as to the needs of the students and referred me to resources

I could use as a tutor and a future teacher.

On my first day of tutoring, I was instructed to teach the student what are and how to find the

greatest common factor of various numbers. The way I taught the students was by using I do, we

do, you do. I showed the students how to find the greatest common factor or by listing the factors

of 12 then 40. The factors of 12 are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12. The factors of 40 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 20,

and 40. The common factors are 2 and 4. And from that, the greatest common factor is 4. I then

showed the students another way to find the greatest common factor by using prime

factorization. For 12 these were 2x2x3, and for 40 they are2x2x2x5. Because the common factor

is 2, we multiplied them (2x2) getting 4.

The purpose of starting with finding the greatest common factor was to have a foundation were

throughout the weeks we could lead up to making a fraction in its simplest form, then convert

fractions to decimals and vice versa. The next step was to convert mixed numbers to improper

fractions and simplifying the fraction. Because the tours had small groups of students, the
students were able to progress fast enough to complete the goal we had to finish all the units we

had planned.

I enjoyed the time I spend with my pupils. I saw them come in with limited knowledge in

fractions and come out of the program being able to manipulate fractions.