I love my job at Study Hut Tutoring… and this Portuguese Water Dog!
Being a Manhattan Beach tutor at Study Hut Tutoring has been an incredibly rewarding experience. I’ve always been drawn to the idea of working in education because of my own educational experience, which I believe was excellent, and made me want to be able to give as many Manhattan Beach students as possible the help that they need to have an equally excellent educational experience. Each time a student comes and sits with their favorite Manhattan Beach tutor, me, I am reminded of the joy I get when I foster that eureka moment in my student. It is so satisfying to see the light-bulb go on as a result of my instruction!
One of my favorite topics as a Manhattan Beach tutor at Study Hut Tutoring is lower level math because I feel that many students often get pushed away from math early on because they see very few practical applications for what they are learning. In order to combat this I do my best to explain to my students from Manhattan Beach Middle School (MBMS) and the other Manhattan Beach schools how what they are learning now will eventually be applied to their future studies. I believe that I am a unique pre-algebra and algebra 1 tutor because I have been exposed to higher level math (such as multivariable calculus and linear algebra) so I am able to explain what by Manhattan Beach students are studying in a great deal of depth and give them an idea of how what they are learning now will be applied later.
In addition to tutoring math, I also love to tutor history. I absolutely love history and love being able to see students become engaged in what they are learning. As a Manhattan Beach tutor, specifically for history, I do my best to place as much emphasis as possible on the story rather than the tedious task of memorizing dates and facts. The stories really are compelling. Once students connect to the emotion of where we are, memorizing is so much easier. I find that those come much easier when intertwined into an engaging story. Being able to spark an interest in a Mira Costa or MBMS student in history for the first time is absolutely amazing.
Imagine if each year you allowed three consecutive months to pass without ever considering diet or exercise; the result would be low energy, an underperforming immune system, and many other undesirable consequences. Just like any other part of the human body, the brain requires regular attention and maintenance to perform to its potential. Students often struggle to get back into the swing of academics after a long summer break, as their brains have been stagnant for weeks on end. Here at Study Hut Tutoring, we make sure to keep our students sharp through the summer time, allowing an easier entrance into the new school year and helping them to start strong and maintain that impressive GPA throughout the course of the academic year.
Summer tutoring offers many benefits to students. For some, summer tutoring serves as a valuable time to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the previous school year, and to clear up and solidify conceptual understanding that they will need to progress to more advanced courses. For others, summer tutoring serves as an opportunity to learn new material before being exposed to it in the classroom, giving them more confidence and an easier route to an “A”. And still for others, we help with writing enrichment, summer reading requirements, and preparation for the Fall SAT and ACT.
Of course, we at Study Hut Tutoring also appreciate the value of leisure time. Our founders, Rob and Sean, along with our tutors have been making the most of this summer by spending plenty of time on and in the ocean, be it to surf, spearfish, or boat across the channel to Catalina Island. We will be seeing off our managerial staff on an annual leadership trip at the end of July, and look forward to building an even stronger team to help our students through the remainder of the summer and next school year.
If you would like more information regarding our summer tutoring services, or you would like to sign up your son or daughter for summer help to prepare for the upcoming school year, please feel welcome to contact us at info@studyhut.com. Enjoy your summer!
With summer underway and the Independence Day holiday weekend behind us, our enrichment programs at Study Hut are in full force, and learning is back on the agenda.
Tonight we begin our ACT small-group course, which runs Monday and Wednesday evenings for the remainder of summer. Our SAT small-group course also begins tomorrow evening, and runs through the rest of summer on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Students are excited to learn concepts that they either missed in high school or have not yet learned, and they are even more eager to go over their practice tests and learn time management and question prioritization strategies for both the ACT and SAT. Students in previous classes at Study Hut Tutoring have learned all about the tremendous benefits of having an ACT tutor or an SAT tutor in their corner.
Whether a student needs help with SAT math, critical reading, writing, or some combination of these, having a top Study Hut tutor has shown to make a huge difference in students’ scores. Our small group ACT and SAT classes have helped to earn students an average of over 200 points of improvement from their original scores, and many students improve 300 or more points.
At the Hut, we strongly suggest making a game-plan early so as to ensure that your son or daughter has the maximum amount of time to make the gains that he or she desires. The test preparation process is, after all, about opening as many doors as possible, both for college and for opportunities beyond.
If your son or daughter has not yet taken a practice SAT or ACT, now is the time to see where you stand. We offer free full-length SAT and ACT diagnostic tests, and we also provide free consultations to parents and students after the test so that you can fully understand your results. Please email info@studyhut.com today to sign up at any of our beach-front locations.
1. Start Early! – This is the most important one. The internet provides plenty of ways to waste your study time, but you’ll be happy you stayed away from Netflix and Reddit when the final finally comes.
2. Study in Chunks – Your brain works best in 50 minute intervals. You may feel studious after your 6 hour study marathon, but a tired brain doesn’t absorb information like a fresh one. Take 5-10 minutes breaks every hour to make sure you’re making the most of your study time.
3. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place – Studying in bed may sound like a good idea, but once you’re in bed, so will a nap. Find a place that works for you. It should be somewhere where you can focus, spread out your notes, and get in a studying groove. And if you get sick of one place, switch it up!
4. Know Your Teacher – Ask questions, take notes, review old worksheets. Figure out what your teacher thinks is important because that’s what will show up on the final.
5. Study Alone – Start with what you don’t know. Review your old tests, quizzes, and homeworks, and take notes on what you missed. Then spend some time on your own with each of these topics. Write down any questions you have because the next step is…
6. Study in Groups – Once you’ve figured out your own strengths and weaknesses in each subject, form a study group. Here you can ask questions you had on your own and answer some of your study buddies’. Explaining concepts and hearing them explained in new ways will strengthen your understanding of the material.
7. Exercise – Exercise increases blood flow to the brain, and you may need all the brain blood you can get for finals week. It’s also a great way to take a break from book to soak up some sun.
8. Sleep – It may be tempting to cram all night, but
it may not help as much as you think. Give your brain a rest! When the night before the test comes around, be confident in the studying you’ve been doing all week and get some extra sleep.
Do you have any friends who seem to breeze through their finals? While your friends are chilling out, are you stressing out?
How do they do it!?!
They know something you don’t know.
Don’t tell anybody, but I am about to let you in on a big secret. This secret will quite literally change your life- it can make you healthier, less stressed out, and happier.
Here’s the secret to properly preparing for finals: stop cramming.
That’s right, to ace your finals and to be less stressed out about them you need to stop cramming. Cramming up to the last minute pulling marathon all nighters is an inefficient and unhealthy way to study.
Instead of cramming, you need to spread out the work. Starting now, you should take a bit of time (not too little but also not too much) to begin reviewing old notes, problem sets, and exams. The key is for this to be a regimented and manageable review process. If you stick with it and do a little bit each day you will not have to do a lot the weekend before your exams.
The bottom line is that you are going pay now or pay later in terms of preparation.
You can coast now and “pay later” with caffeine-fueled evenings reviewing a semester’s worth of materials in a few days. This is the “drinking from a fire hose” approach. Not fun.
Or you can “pay now” by doing a little bit of preparation each night and spreading out the workload into something more manageable. Being well rested and healthy indisputably helps you perform better exams, this approach of spreading out the work means you will be able to cover more material in a smart way.
An additional benefit of being ahead of the curve when it comes to preparation is if you come across any questions you can ask friends or instructor for extra help and advice.
As Mark Twain (or maybe Agatha Christie) once said, “the secret to getting ahead is getting started.” There is no time to wait, start this process now without the unhealthy late-night heroics, and your mind, body, and report card will thank you.
1. During the school day, teachers’ attention is spread among many students. A tutor can create a targeted plan for your child’s specific needs.
2. Today, kids have increased access to technology, busy parents, and have extremely busy schedules, all of which can potentially distract them from their studies. Time with a tutor gives them the time to focus only on homework or studying.
3. Tutors have the time to explain a concept in several different ways, instead of having to move class along at a certain pace.
4. Tutoring can also teach study skills, which can then be applied to what’s going on in school.
5. Even for students who are doing well in school, tutoring can provide a competitive edge to do even better.
6. Summer tutoring can prepare students for upcoming difficult subjects, such as algebra, or reinforce what was already learned that year so September isn’t spent playing catch-up.
7. For high school students, individual or small group tutoring can be essential for APs and SAT subject tests.
8. For younger kids, tutoring can help boost standardized test scores.
9. A tutor can be a useful sounding board for an upcoming project, paper, or exam, and can help prevent the stress and frustration of leaving an assignment for the night before.
10. Whether it’s third grade math, high school chemistry, or middle school history, tutors have expertise in their subject and can make it more engaging and maybe even fun.
Learn Latin! No, you don’t have to be fluent, it is a “dead language” after all. But knowing your Latin roots is a valuable help. Biology is full of strange words that need to be memorized. Endotherm, hemophilia, cephalization, echinoderm, autotroph, mesoderm…the list goes on. It can get overwhelming, and you aren’t going to remember everything. The good news is that knowing your Latin roots will let you “fake” your way through words you’ve never seen before, and remember words that you probably knew a while ago. Take echinoderm. If you know that “echino” means spiny, and “derm” means skin, you know you are talking about something with spiny skin. What has spiny skin? Sea urchins! Echinoderms are members of the sea urchin family, including sea stars and sea cucumbers. How about autotroph? Well, “auto” means self, and “troph” means food. Self food…what organisms make their own food? Plants! Now you can avoid being bogged down in big scary looking words, even if you have never seen them before.
Pretty colors. Biology involves more than writing. You need to be able to recognize images and figures, as a lot of biological learning comes across visually. Would you rather explain what a cell looks like with words or with a picture? A picture is usually much easier to understand. This is where the colors come in. When you are labeling and drawing figures for different biological concepts, try to use different colors for the different pieces. This will help the image stick in your mind, and differentiate between the important parts. When you think back to remember the image on a test, it will be much easier to remember what “the purple part” of the cell was rather than the gray part in a gray picture. Color coding your flashcards works the same way; the color will help the word stick in your memory and your recall will be faster.
Repetition. Let’s face it, biology takes a lot of memorization, more than most subjects. You are going to have to sit down and memorize the process of cellular respiration, the different amino acids, the phylogeny of birds. The fastest and most reliable way to do this is to write down the info. Then write it again. And again, and again, and again until it becomes easy. Physically writing down information you have to know can really cement that info in your long term memory, especially for things that aren’t pictures, but just words or names you have to know. Instead of passively looking at a textbook page, fill up pages with the Krebs cycle if you need to, or the reactions of photosynthesis, or the structure of amino acids. By test time writing the whole thing down will be second nature, and getting an A will be a piece of cake.
Kids today have it rough. With all the competition to get into top ranked schools, parents are starting earlier and earlier to give their little academics a head start. But when does a parent’s involvement in their kids school work become a hindrance? Like most things, it’s all about a balance.
Studies show that children with parents who stay actively involved with their schoolwork will test better than kids with parents who don’t. So stay involved! Ask questions, congratulate success and encourage asking for help in more difficult subjects. Parents should know when their kids have a test and except to see the grade for it. This holds their student accountable for their grades. When parents do get back their kids work, reward their efforts. This doesn’t mean taking your daughter to buy a new IPod every time she brings home her Friday spelling test. But it does deserve a high five or a hug. (And remember parents, B grades are still fridge worthy!) Parents should be concerned with lower grades. When problem areas in their kid’s classes arise, steps should be taken to find extra help for their students. Begin with asking to see homework and review all problems that they have trouble with. If problems continue, check in with the teacher and see what else you can do to make sure your child keeps up with work.
When involvement becomes a hindrance rather than helpful is when parents begin to micromanage. Parents must remember that students should be expected to do their homework—and not because Mom stands over their shoulder until it’s done. Establish a set routine and stick to it. Your little study monkey should know that every day like clockwork, when he/she comes home, they makes a snack and start on homework. If your student is having trouble in school, run through their completed homework for mistakes, then help them with the questions they had trouble with. If your student normally tests well in school, ask if they completed their homework each night and trust that they have fulfilled each assignment completely. This allows your student to see that they need to be responsible for their own work and that you except them to be in charge. If they begin to slack on tests, start reviewing their homework again. Students need to learn how to be accountable for their studies. Writing down assignments, organizing papers and planning when to study are lifelong skills that they will need as a student as well as a professional.
Here at The Study Hut sometimes saying goodbye is a happy occasion. As the summer is coming to an end so we say goodbye to a few of our tutors. Not to worry! Their departure is not due to sub-par performance or conflicts between other tutors, but because they are once again joining the ranks of US college students or are exploring the world in hopes of expanding human knowledge.
We are happy to see one tutor off to Columbia University this fall. Jenna who has worked with us this last year came to us already with some teaching experience. She had taught and substituted for a few of the lower elementary grades after finishing school. Now she is going for her Masters degree in education. We are always happy people using their skills to teach other and help others.
Another tutor will also be leaving not just us, the whole United States. Jenny, after a few years helping kids in our Redondo office, is packing up and leaving for Australia. A marine-bio major, Jenny spent time studying sharks while in school. Now she plans on continuing that hobby/love. She will be camping out on the remote coast of Australia tracking, recording, and studying the local shark behavior. After a few months she will then be attending graduate school in Australia.
We wish Jenna and Jenny the best of luck on their new adventures.
Hey everyone. After hours of research and planning we at Study Hut are almost ready to start a new line of services aimed at helping college-ready-high schooler’s not just choose the best college for them but also help get into and pay for school. The first half of our new services will be geared at having students “Brand” themselves by identifying their own unique set of skills and strengths which they can then use to better their chances of getting to the college of their choosing. By better understanding and realizing his/her own strengths students will be better able to write insightful and stronger college application essays and articulate their worth to colleges during the application process.
After you get in the school of your dreams we offer another set of services, which mom and will love, that help reduce the cost of college. We will help students apply and win scholarships by coaching them how to best present themselves when applying for scholarships. We are also able to find other ways of reducing the college cost by getting in-state tuition, testing out of some college courses (which is not just limited to AP tests), help with FASFA application and process, tuition reimbursement, and other programs offered to help students reduce the cost of college tuition.
We at the Hut have all ourselves gone through the marathon of college apps and are aware how much stress the process can be. We are happy to offer our own experience and expertise in aiding students doing their very best to get in and pay for college.
