<p>Recently I began tutoring two kids, one in algebra 1 and one in reading, and I'm running into some difficulties.</p>
<p>With the reading child. He just doesn't seem to really comprehend the content of what he is reading at all, or at least how the details connect to form a main idea. When I ask him questions he tries to repeat random words verbatim from the passage. I need some advice in getting him to that understanding of the content and the main idea.</p>
<p>Any advice or tips would be appreciated in teaching algebra 1 as well. I seem to be doing better with the algebra 1 student, but I could definitely improve. I think the problem is she knows what to do, but she doesn't understand the concept behind what she is doing. </p>
<p>Essentially, I'm having issues trying to help the kids develop insight with the material. Thanks!</p>
<p>Reading: Try breaking down every couple sentences. Read a sentence, and summarize it in a phrase. Do the same for each sentence in a paragraph. After you finish the paragraph, recap the summary phrases and ask the kid to summarize the paragraph in a sentence. Do this for all the paragraphs, then ask the kid to summarize the entire paragraph of the passage. That’d be the main idea of the passage. If that’s successful, have the kid summarize everything on his own. The general idea of this is to teach the kid to understand the passage on his own so that he can answer reading comprehension questions. Just something you can try.</p>
<p>Algebra: After doing the problem and getting the correct answer, recap what you did. Let’s say you’re solving an algebraic equation. x + 6 = 3 What is x? Recap: You used subtraction to simplify the equation to answer the question “What is x?” or something like that.</p>
<p>Hope this helps :)</p>
<p>For algebra, two words: Khan Academy</p>