Tutoring Reflection

Kirsten Dent
Date of tutoring session: 1/16/2019 Student Age & Grade: 8th Grade, 13 years old
Answer all in complete, grammatically correct sentences.
1. What topic(s) did you cover in your tutoring session?
I worked with the student on simplifying exponents. The student has struggled with
understanding how the bases and exponents work together. So, we went through and reviewed
what to do when you add, subtract, multiply, and divide exponents.
2. Did you use any problem-solving strategies or tools from this class? If so, describe how this
went. If not, what techniques did you use to help your student?
I used the simpler problem strategy with her because the worksheet she was given had harder
problems. I knew that while I helped her understand how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide
exponents I needed to give her simpler problems that would be easy to understand. We did
simpler problems for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Then I showed her a list of
all those strategies but with variables instead of numbers, that way she would know how things
work for any problem that she has. This made it so she had two different examples for each
type of solving for exponents.
3. Describe any challenges you faced in the session. (What was your student’s attitude about
math? Did you notice any knowledge gaps? Was the lesson/homework too easy or too hard
for the student’s skill level? etc.)
The challenge that I found is once she started working on her worksheet, I realized she still
didn’t know how to do them all the way. She was depending on her paper or me too much. So, I
had her stop and we reviewed them so that she would be able to have another opportunity to
understand how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide exponents together. I had her do a few
problems then I would pull away one example and see if she could still do it. Then I pulled away
all the example after a couple times and she was able to do it better. She relied less on her
paper and she was able to remember more how to solve the problems.
4. Describe any triumphs you had in the session.
I just enjoyed being able to see this student go from being discouraged to excited because she
knew what she needed to do. I think she worked really hard for me and she was able to show
me that she really wanted to learn how to do her worksheet.
5. What are your take-a-ways from the session? (Did you learn anything about teaching from
it? What would you do differently or the same to help your students.)
I learned that you need to make sure the students understand the basics first before you give
them something challenging. The student needed to know how what to do with each exponent
 Tutoring Reflection

before she could solve the problem. Next time I would make sure that I as them more questions
to check their understanding.
6. Other thoughts? (How comfortable were you with the topics? Did you face challenges with
the student’s teacher’s instruction style/rules? Can you relate to your student’s
struggles/triumphs?)
I really enjoyed teaching the student how to simply exponents. I feel like giving the students
examples to help her and using simpler problems did give her the support she needed. I
remember learning this in middle school and I always remembered my teacher would make us
write down examples for all our problems. My teacher wanted to make sure we all understood.
I did that same thing for the student and now she is excited about that topic in math now.