Team Discussion: Addressing Knowledge Gaps

This discussion topic comes from Robin DeShazo, a math tutor who recently joined the our team:

“We often find that the gap in understanding for the student lies not in the concept that is being covered, but in a previous concept that the student needs to know to understand the current concept. This hole in their understanding is often shown when interacting with the student.

How do you handle this? Do you abandon the current concept to focus on the missed concept? Do you give a brief overview of the missed concept and move on with the current concept? Or do you push the student through the missed concept and stay focused on only the current concept?”

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yup_discussWhat do you find works well in a situation like this?
What doesn’t work well?

[Suggest a Discussion Topic]

— Team Yup 

Discussion:

Team Discussion: Online Resources

Today’s discussion topic comes from physics & chemistry tutor Igor Bieloposkyi :

“Regardless of competence, sometimes there are questions with unpredictable answers or approaches. What resources do you use?

I’d like to bring in as an example a wonderful website called Wolfram Alpha. This website doesn’t give you the solution, but it can help you calculate practically anything! It is a mathematical Google. 🙂

How about you? What resources do you have bookmarked to quickly search for solutions other than HipChat?”

yup_discuss

Have an idea for a team discussion topic?
Use the Team Discussion form to let us know!

 

— Team Yup

Discussion:

Session of the Week: Winner!

Congratulations to Session of the Week winner, Murali Namburi. Great job using questioning techniques to guide this student through their confusion, Murali! Your $25 Bonus will be included with your next paycheck. Click the button below to open session PDF in new tab.

? This session was nominated by one of our Tutor Quality Managers, but you can self-nominate one of your own awesome sessions via the Session of the Week submission form.

— Team Yup

Discussion:

Tutor Contribution: Mnemonic Devices

In a Nutshell: This tutor contribution comes from Tutor Quality Manager Sharon Matsuoka and discusses how mnemonic devices can help students commit important information to memory.

Some of you have “heard” me tell my log joke.  For me, it’s less of a joke and more of a fun mnemonic device.  So, say you have a problem like 2^(x + 3) = 5 and we need to solve it.  We’d tell the student to take the log of both sides, ask what happens to the exponent, etc.  At this point, you can tell the student the joke: “How do you get an exponent out of a tree?”  “You hit it with a log!”  Lol!  You get it?  Because the exponent’s an exponent so it’s in the tree.  Yeah…I’ll stop now.  Anyway, my students would always chuckle at my antics and some would inevitably roll their eyes, but they’d always remember, even into the following year, how to solve these types of equations.  

So, what are mnemonic devices and when can we use them?  Mnemonic devices are phrases or acronyms that can help someone memorize something, like “Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally.” or “SOH-CAH-TOA”.  Many teachers use such mnemonic devices, so I feel that if the student has this knowledge base (which you can test by asking: “Are you familiar with the order of operations?” or “Are you familiar with trigonometric ratios in a right triangle?” and the student responds by saying the mnemonic device), then that can be one of the first things you talk about while/after probing for understanding.  However, if the student has no such recollection, because we are focused on complete understanding, we don’t want to introduce these right away.  Instead, after we do the problem and explain the theory and reasoning behind the steps we’ve taken, we can then say: “Here’s an easy way to remember _.”  

What about you?  What are some fun mnemonic devices you know of?  What are the most helpful ones you find yourself using all the time?

Thanks for your contribution, Sharon! To submit your own newsfeed contribution, email us at tutor.support@yup.com.

— Team Yup

Discussion: