My Tutoring Methods

My tutoring methods are fairly straight-forward and very effective. I break the core concepts to be cover each lesson into bite-size chunks. I explain each concept with an emphasis of how it should be applied to homework and test problems. I do my best to avoid going too deeply into theory at the expense of practical application in test problem solving. My experience with tutoring and teaching math and physics has been that the student ultimately wants a higher grade as a result of improved ability to solve test and homework questions.

The main focus of my math tutoring and physics tutoring can be summed up as follows: problem solving. I work with the student to solve a high volume of problems. One thing that I always do with each student is to stop after each problem and cover several questions with the student. These questions are:

What were the core ideas and formulas used to solve the problem?
What was it about the particular problem that indicated which concepts and formulas to apply?
What would need to appear in further problems to indicate that the same concepts and formulas in a similar way?
What could appear in similar problems that would indicate that a different approach would be needed?
What different approaches are available and when would they be applied?

My students learn through repetition of solving similar problems. The absolute best way to prepare for a test is to solve as many possible test problems as possible and to fully understand how and why a particular set of concepts and formulas were applied. Problems solving is what I do with students. The students have been very satisfied with this approach and have achieved solid improvement as a result.