When looking at surds Tessa’s application is great, we just had to have a brief refresher on how to expand surds but after that she was able to do this types of questions very well as well as rationalising the denominator. Her graphing skills are also great with linear, parabolic and exponential functions. She is good at applying algebraic rules we learn and also giving any questions a try or trying to deduce how to carry out what a questions might be asking.

We needed to revise some points of knowing why to graph such as finding an x or y intercept and an axis of symmetry or vertex for a parabola. This is something that she should immediately know how to do particularly x and y intercepts as it is key to know how to graph so it is something I’ll note down for us to practice every lesson so that it’s harder to forget. There’s certain algebraic rules which Tessa is great at applying but just needs constant refreshers so o advice her to try and practice as much as possible to make it a memorised and well understood concept. We also need to work on writing out our working out step by step to avoid careless errors and double checking answers.

Ashton’s algebraic application has improved well since we first started with tutoring, he is becoming more and more confident in trying challenging questions by applying foundational algebraic techniques. He is good at remembering certain rules or formulas to apply too which is great and also starting to understand how we can manipulate questions to change the subject.

I think the main thing Ashton has to look out for whilst he is completing his test is careless errors. At times there is a small error which occurs then impacts the rest of his working out and hence final answer, I told Ashton to make sure he doesn’t rush through his questions and doubles checks his answers when he can and to write everything out step by step as to avoid errors where possible.

For the surds portion she was able to pick up and understand the class work well and easily and we went over how certain questions involved some of the perfect square formulas we looked at last week but simply replaced the values with surds. Once we recognized this she was able to continue with a few more practice questions well. We focused on completing the square heavily today as well as using the quadratic formula as that was a more difficult area of what we looked at last week and needed further practice but Tessa is continually improving on these types of questions especially utilizing the quadratic formula.

Sometimes Tessa makes careless errors such as forgetting a negative sign in front of a number which impacts her answer later on so I think we'll try doing questions next week in a step by step format to minimise mistakes when we try to finish questions in our head and only then put pen to paper. Factorisation and simplifying factors will be something we continue to practice and work on as it is key and will be added upon over the next few years.

He is able to read well and is starting to not brush past certain words or wanting to skip areas and instead asking for help or tackling new and challenging words. His ability to sound out words is great and he continues to write well.

Sometimes he is unable to recognize certain common words we use so I try to describe what the word is for him to understand how we say it as it is already in his vocabulary but doesn't recognize it spelt out. This is something we will work on including understanding words like these from pictures in the book which generally show an image describing the words.