Holiday break will soon be upon us. As most great rewards tend to go, such a relaxing time can also come with substantial risk: without proper attention, you may find yourself returning to classes behind, and this is only more of a concern if your school holds first-semester finals immediately after break. Here are four tips to ensure you stay on top of your classes during the holidays.
Compile a list of all your missing assignments and complete them, regardless of whether you can still get credit for them. Most of the time, the assignments you’ve skipped wind up being the subjects on which you require the most review, and even if there are no points to be reclaimed (often, especially if you communicate with your teacher beforehand, there will be), making them up will help you anyway.
Take note of all your lowest exam scores and re-study for those tests. Similar to the first tip, even if you won’t be able to retake any of them, reviewing for the exams on which you struggled most is a way of covering the material you are most likely to struggle with on the final.
Make Cornell notes from your textbook. They’re a way to absorb the material more deeply, and to think about the “Why” and “How” questions—i.e., to critically think—while reviewing the factual material as well. If you don’t know how to take Cornell notes, or if it’s been a while, you can review with this guide.
Reread the chapters you found the hardest to understand. Students are frequently surprised at how easily the topic comes together the second time they go through it, especially if it’s been a while since they covered it.
Hopefully you see the common theme here: if you want to be fresh and in as strong a place as possible heading into finals, you should first turn to your weak spots. Break is a great time to iron them out. Feel free to call our office anytime – we’ll be open all break helping kids get ready for their semester finals!
Consistent ACT SAT Preparation: The Key to Getting that High SAT or ACT Score
Being consistent can be challenging, especially when you are a junior in high school. You have a lot on your plate with your classes and you may be on a sports team, part of a club, or on student council. Now you have to start thinking about which colleges you might want to apply to next year and preparing to take the ACT or the SAT (sign up ). All of this can consume a lot of time and make it hard to find time in your academic or extracurricular performance to get ready for standardized tests – the SAT and the ACT. That being said, it is extremely important to remain consistent when you are preparing to take the ACT or the SAT. Having consistent ACT SAT preparation is key to succeeding on this important test.
When you begin your ACT test prep or SAT test prep, it is important to create a study plan and stick to it. If you hire a tutor to help you with your ACT or SAT test prep, they can help create this study plan with you based on your specific needs. It is important to be consistent in the time you dedicate to ACT or SAT test prep. Choose a day and time that works best for you each week and dedicate this to test prep. This will ensure that you remain consistent in the time and effort you are putting in.
On that same note, it is important that you always do any homework or quizzes assigned to you by your test prep program or tutor. The purpose of these assignments is to give you extra exposure to ACT or SAT questions, but also to provide more practice on test-taking strategies. The more consistently you practice active reading and test-taking strategies, the more consistent you will be in implementing these while taking the test. Consistency in ACT or SAT test prep will better prepare you for taking the test and allow you to remain consistent in your other commitments as well.
If you have any questions about how to come up with such a schedule or get a consistent tutor for either of these tests, don’t hesitate to call Justin at the Redondo Beach Study Hut – 310-540-5888. He is available and knowledgeable about what it takes to get the score you need to get into the school you want.
Looking for a Redondo Beach Algebra tutor? We definitely can help. In this article, we explain how Study Hut Tutoring helps students with the specific rigors of Algebra:
Algebra. The basics. A foundation for all math to come after it. The critical cornerstone that all students must overcome. It’s no wonder your average kid is afraid of the stuff! But that’s exactly what an algebra tutor is for.
Have you or a loved one ever suffered from taking Algebra? Are you suffering right now (in the vicinity of Redondo Beach)? No longer! We’ve got great Algebra tutors in your area who can not only make algebra bearable, but unleash math powers that you never knew you had.
Work with a Redondo Beach Algebra tutor at Study Hut and we’ll take you through drills and flash cards; we know how to break down problems for maximum understanding. And this isn’t like a classroom setting, where the teacher can’t spend time on every kid. At Study Hut, we’re designed to focus on one kid at a time. We’ll figure out how you best learn algebra, and help you translate from “what the heck?” to “I now know everything.”
To the moms and dads and legal guardians out there: Come down to the Redondo Beach Study Hut and we’ll match your student with an algebra tutor based on what areas they need the most work on and the personality they work best with, as well as what schedule best accommodates you. All of our tutors are college graduates who have mastered the subjects they’re tutoring. Not only do they know their material well, but they are friendly and encouraging with kids and motivated to boot.
We strive for an environment that’s comfortable, but productive. We want students to feel relaxed and successful, and for that feeling to carry over into the classroom so that they can perform at the advanced level that we know they’re capable of. A Redondo Beach algebra tutor at Study Hut will provide you with everything you need to know about
We’re proud to have helped years of students reach their very best potential. We want your student to reach theirs as well – so if like what you’ve read, fill out the form below or give us a call at (310) 540-5888.
The modern-day college application and essay tutoring process can be rather overwhelming. With transcripts, letters of recommendation, resumes, SAT and/or ACT scores, supplemental writing questions, essays, etc., it can be a lot to handle. But do not fear, Study Hut is here to help you execute properly and efficiently.
Our college applications & essays tutors will guide you through the entire process. First, they will assist you with conducting an in-depth college search based on your major choice and interests. Then, they will help you to create a varied list of schools and stay organized to ensure all submission deadlines are met. Our tutors will also aid in building a resume as well as requesting transcripts and letters of recommendation.
Most importantly, our tutors have a special set of skills and will help you masterfully write all the essays required in order to paint you in the best light for prospective universities. An original essay is all you need to set yourself apart from other applicants. Taking the time to create a well written essay before you’re bogged down with work in the Fall will not only increase your odds of getting into your dream schools, but will also make you more confident during the application process. Our tutors know how to help you bring out your inner writing genius and will help you write an essay that makes you shine.
Finally, once all of your applications have been submitted, we will help you apply for scholarships that are tailored to your skills and interests. There’s nothing better than finding schools that will pay you to attend their campus in the fall!
Study Hut offers three College Application Tutoring packages:
Skimboard: three universities;
Shortboard: six universities;
Longboard: ten universities;
Eliminate your worries by starting early! Dedicating a small amount of time to your college applications during your summer vacation will save you endless amounts of stress during fall semester, so you can just focus on your classes and enjoying your senior year!
Times they are a-changing, and students will soon arrive at a crucial moment in their lives as they weigh several options for post-High School education. Most students will be looking at college entrance exams such as ACT and SAT. From experience, I can definitely say that dealing with these tests, as well as thinking about colleges on my own was a daunting task. Here at Study Hut in Redondo Beach, we aim to make that journey a little easier. So if you’re looking for Redondo Beach ACT tutoring, you’ve come to the right place!
With our online ACT system and one-on-one sessions, students maintain a consistent weekly program to help improve study skills, test taking strategies, and content review. We diagnose and focus on areas of weakness through content reviews to help increase the students’ confidence, and most importantly, increase their test taking skills. Many students make the mistake of thinking that mere content review is enough to succeed on these tests, but even the best students are not the best test takers; at Study Hut we strive to make sure that your student knows the tips and tricks to succeed on the ACT. So how does this work? First, we set you up with a free and brief consultation where we determine the Redondo Beach ACT tutoring course that’s right for you. Our packages range from 12 to 16 to 20 sessions total, with each session lasting two hours. After we set up the course that best suits your schedule and abilities, you start meeting with your tutor!
Students, past and present, love coming to Study Hut for a subject as demanding as the standardized testing simply because of the individual attention that they receive from the knowledgeable tutors here. Our tutors come from a variety of training and background from some of the top colleges like UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Not in Redondo Beach? No problem! Redondo Beach Study Hut caters to all the surrounding South Bay and Palos Verdes areas, with students from Redondo Union High, PV and PV Peninsula High, Torrance High, for all the test prep and subject tutoring needs.
Ready to give this a shot? Either fill out the contact form on this page or give us a ring at (310) 540-5888. We’re looking forward to gearing you up!
AP Biology, like many AP classes, contains a LARGE load of material. Each test is composed of what could be considered a midterm or final in another class. Here are some memory tricks for one section from a Redondo Beach AP Biology Tutor.
Memory Tricks for Transcription and Translation
Transcription and Translation are the two steps to the central dogma in Biology. They are the two parts of the process that codes genes into proteins-turning the blueprint into the 3D building, if you will.
Memory Trick #1:
Transcription means to take what is spoken and turn it into a written account. It is taking something of the same language and changing its form. Similarly, in biology, transcription is the process of changing the form of the thing, while keeping it the same language. What I mean by that is that DNA and RNA are both built from nucleotides (nucleotides=the language) though they are in different forms (DNA=double stranded helix, RNA=single strand).
Translation means to change the language. Similarly in biology, translation is taking something from one language (nucleotides) to another (amino acids) in turning RNA to a protein.
Memory Trick #2:
After transcription, the mRNA goes through a few steps before it leaves the nucleus to find a ribosome and be translated. One of the steps is ‘splicing’ where parts of the mRNA are removed, and only the important section is left. Here’s the trick: EXons are the important part of the mRNA…they are the part that EXits the nucleus. the INtrons are the part that are removed…they are the part that stay IN the nucleus.
Memory Trick #3:
For more great tricks like this, come to Study Hut in Redondo Beach and work with an esteemed AP Biology tutor! Many of our tutors had not only taken biology, but have taken advanced biology classes in college and can provide support and explanations for concepts in AP Bio that have been skimmed over/raced through!
Ok the weather is pretty nice…blue skies for days…Ahhhh. Winter Break! A time to relax, eat, hang out with family, and celebrate. You should definitely do all of those things… (here comes a but)…(drumroll please)…
BUT
You should ALSO use your break wisely! Open that backpack and do some studying over Winter Break. It’s been a long, hard semester, and you do not want to spoil all that you have put into it by slacking right before finals. With the biggest test of the semester right around the corner, many of you already have a study guide or an idea of what your final will look like. Use that!
You can start making flashcards for vocab. That’s something you can do with Mariah Carey belting out “All I Want for Christmas…is an A!” and it’s been proven that listening to music while studying can improve your performance on the test!
You should make a detailed outline with flow charts, timelines and pretty colors. This will refresh your memory of the topics and provide a beautiful study guide you can use once finals week arrives.
Grab your old tests or practice tests, and retake them, checking your answers as you go. This will help you decide where you need to allocate the most time for studying, and where you can skim a bit because you already have a good handle on the material.
DO NOT simply run your eyes over every single chapter in the book, or every single page of notes you’ve written. This is a waste of your time. Rereading is a passive activity, plus it is much too general. With so much material to cover, you are better off zeroing in on what’s important (hint: what’s on the study guide or what was on old tests). Have fun over break, but spending the entire two weeks binge-watching Parks and Rec for the 3rd time will come back to haunt you when finals week arrives! Put in a few hours over break and I promise you’ll thank yourself later!
Picture this: you’re sitting in your room trying to start your biology homework. #1- Where does cellular respiration occur in the cell? You’re drawing a complete blank. The cytoplasm? The chloroplast? Mitochondria? What about the endoplasmic reticulum – smooth or rough? Wish you had some help? You can find great biology tutoring in Torrance here, at Study Hut Tutoring.
The cell cycles are the most challenging part of the year for many biology students. Here are all of the cycles listed in chronological order and grouped by function and location:
Daytime – chloroplast (plant cell only)
Photosynthesis (thylakoid)
Calvin cycle (stroma)
Nighttime (aerobic – with oxygen) – mitochondria
Glycolysis (cytoplasm)
Krebs/Citric Acid cycle (matrix of mitochondria)
Electron Transport Chain (inner membrane of mitochondria)
Nighttime (anaerobic – without oxygen) – cytoplasm
Glycolysis (cytoplasm)
Fermentation (cytoplasm)
BEFORE YOU LOOK AT THE PICTURE BELOW, try this on your own: draw a big rectangle. Inside the rectangle, draw a chloroplast (circle with smaller circles inside of it), then draw a mitochondria (jelly bean-shaped oval with a squiggle inside of it). Now try to place all of the cycles above on the drawing, connected by arrows. If you can, add some important inputs/outputs of each cycle (H2O, CO2, O2, ATP, sunlight, glucose, etc). Does it look something like this?
1) During the day, the plant
– uses the chloroplast to make ATP (via photosynthesis) and
– glucose (Calvin cycle) to store up energy.
2) At night, the plant will take the glucose it made during the day (via Calvin cycle) and
– break it down (glycolysis) to
– make energy (Krebs/ETC).
3) If the plant does not have access to oxygen, it will do
– glycolysis and
– fermentation (instead of Krebs and ETC).
Need someone to help you draw it? Look no further. Biology tutoring in Torrance is easy to find, affordable, and easy to schedule. Within minutes of calling, you’ll be able to schedule one of our many experienced tutors for a one-on-one tutoring session to help you with that tough bio homework or study for an upcoming test.
Sophomore or Junior year is hard enough, you don’t need to struggle with chemistry too! Taking AP Chem Senior year can be even worse! No need to drive for hours or hire Princeton professors, you can find great one-on-one chemistry tutoring in Redondo Beach with experienced tutors. Here are some tips from one of our tutors to get you started:
Get started now
Chemistry is one of those subjects that builds on itself, so don’t fall behind. If you don’t understand something at the beginning of the semester, chances are it will come back to bite you later. For example, significant figures. Learn your sig fig rules now and practice, because you’ll be using them all year. Don’t lose points on questions you answer correctly but forget to put in sig figs!
Get a calculator and use it
You won’t be allowed a graphing calculator, so buy a scientific calculator at the beginning of the semester and get comfortable with it. Read the manual if you need to, or Google how to type in certain numbers (ex: try typing in the number of molecules in 1 mole of a substance). So many students can follow a formula and write out the math properly, but make mistakes typing it into a calculator. Don’t borrow your friend’s calculator just to take your test – chances are you won’t know how to use it, or you’ll waste time figuring out where the 10^x button is. That being said…
Always, always, always check your work
Maybe you wrote down the right number to begin with, but you didn’t copy it properly. Maybe you thought “megagrams” meant “0.01 g” (hint: it doesn’t). Maybe you left off a zero when you punched the numbers into your calculator. Always look at your answer and look back at the question. Does the size of the number make sense? Are there 100 centimeters in a millimeter, or is it 100 millimeters in one centimeter (learn your Greek prefixes)? Don’t worry, fix your answer. I won’t tell.
Need more help? Go to Palos Verdes High School or Palos Verdes Peninsula High School? Have a test tomorrow? Luckily, you can find good, local chemistry tutoring in Redondo Beach to get you through the year (and maybe even start having fun). Each tutor has taken chemistry from different teachers and has a different set of tips and tricks; let Study Hut help you find the right fit for you. Give us an hour, and we’ll help you see where you’re going wrong, show you study hacks, and check your homework step by step. Chemistry is what makes our world work the way it does, the least you can do is try to understand it!
It has been yet another successful year at the Study Hut in Redondo Beach. We saw improved grades, great SAT and ACT scores, and admissions to awesome colleges all over the US. From the schools in Palos Verdes (PVHS and Peninsula), to RUHSD, and all the Torrance schools in between (South and West mostly), all our beloved Hut kiddos have truly set the bar in the South Bay.
For instance, Darrian went from getting D’s in her freshman year, to getting B’s this year after getting routine subject tutoring. Thomas was able to raise his worst subject, Spanish, from an F to a B! We were also ecstatic to see Austin raise all of his grades to A’s and B’s this year with tutoring twice a week after getting straight C’s last year. Austin’s mother has told us that her relationship with Austin has improved dramatically since they no longer have fights over his grades anymore! Connor stunned his mom and brought his tutor to tears of joy when he earned straight A’s both semesters of his junior year after receiving straight C’s during his Freshman and Sophomore years.
Many of our students demonstrated exceptional improvement on their SAT and ACT scores. Connor raised his ACT score from a 20 to a 29 in just three months after coming in for ACT tutoring twice a week. Sophia juggled her hectic life of AP classes, club soccer, and numerous school clubs by coming in once a week for four months for ACT tutoring. Sophia raised her score from a 29 to a 35, which secured her early admission to one of the most prestigious academic institutions in Massachusetts, Wellesley College. Shivani not only scored an outstanding 2300 on her SAT, but used test preparation at Study Hut to ace her SAT 2 tests as well in Math and English.
We could not be more proud of the incredible college acceptances our students earned after getting college guidance with their tutors. Olivia was not only admitted to every college she applied to, but got into her dream school, USC, to pursue studies in Marine Biology. Kelley was accepted to the incredibly competitive music industry program at USC, which only admits thirty students annually. Hayley will be attending one of the most impacted schools in California, San Diego State, which has been her dream school since she was in sixth grade. Eliza and Mollie will both be attending the most impacted college in the country, UCLA, in the fall.
