Brianna Tunggal
Tuesdays 3:15
Taft Math Center
Ms. Brugos
For each PACT visit, I tutored 4th graders on
Tuesdays from 3:15-4:00 at Menlo. We
usually start out with a basic warm-up on whiteboards, then we work with them
on their homework. Their homework
consists of straightforward math problems (addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division) or word problems. If they finish their homework early, we play math games with
them.
Before starting to tutor, I thought we were going to be
working with the students one on one.
As it turned out, Menlo doesn’t have quite enough tutors to work
individually with the students. I
ended up working with one girl, Jennifer, for all 3 visits, and helping her
friends that happened to sit at the table group with her. Because I worked with so many kids, I
noticed that all of the kids I’ve helped work at different rates and are
more/less comfortable with basic multiplication than others. Addressing the social issue of the
teacher : student ratio, students who are more unfamiliar with the material or
work at slower paces wouldn’t be able to keep up in a large class. While Jennifer knows her multiplication
tables extremely well, her friend Kaileen doesn’t. Thus, it takes Kaileen a much longer time to complete her
homework. Having tutors really
helps students like Kaileen who don’t work as quickly, because we’re able to
explain the concepts to her at the pace she’s most comfortable at.
I feel accomplished volunteering to help tutor Taft kids in
math so far. I like helping the
kids work through problems and explaining things they don’t understand to
them. It’s also really nice when
you teach a kid a concept, and they remember it and use that concept on the
next problem they work on. I’m
excited to continue working with these students!
