Benjamin T

You definately have a very firm and immediately available knowledge of the content you were reviewing with the student! Your use of the whiteboard to give the classic drawing and graphical explanation oft he derivative was done very well and it is obvious that you are experienced both in the mathematical side of this but also in the tutoring side. While your drawings and explanations were very well done, they could have been slowed down a bit to ensure the student is completely following. While the principles you were explaining were relatviely straightforward, slowing down a bit and adding a few more details could help deliver your message more effectively. For example, your explanation jumped from secant lines to tangent lines very abruptly near the start of the session. Besides this, you did very well! I really liked how you admitted when you were unsure of a certain proof for a trignometric formula but proceeded to give the learner some resources on how they could find it out for themselves after the session.

Tutor · 14 hr. ago

I thought you did an excellent job engaging the learner. I like that you continuously checked in with them while you were explaining concepts to keep them "in the loop" and ensure they were understanding. I would recommend asking more open-ended questions to learners—questions that prompt the learner to share and apply some of their existing knowledge. For example, when you explaining the question with the derivative of sin(x), you could have asked something like "can you think of any trigonometry properties/identities that might be helpful here?" I think that particularly in calculus, learning and practicing applying the "foundational" trigonometry identities on the fly into more complex ones is really important since memorizing every identity is very burdensome.

Tutor · 14 hr. ago

Your explanations were the some of the best I've ever seen in a peer review. You were helpful, intuitive, and went at a good pace. That tangent line problem was challenging with lots of steps, but your explanation made it highly understandable. I like that you used different colors on your whiteboard to help differentiate between different variables/symbols/etc. Adding in links to relevant Khan videos was a nice touch, too. I'm going to try using the same whiteboard website as you! No recommendations.

Tutor · 14 hr. ago

I thought you were friendly, approachable, and respectful throughout the session. I would recommend briefly introducing yourself at the start of sessions as well as referring to learners by name. I would also recommend deliberately commending learners when they get something correct, especially when solving challenging problems. For example, when the learner figured out cos(h-1)/h wasn't necessarily undefined, adding some brief words of encouragement (e.g. "Great job! That was a difficult question") after confirming they were right would have helped keep the learner encouraged.

Tutor · 14 hr. ago