Whether it’s extra help for a really hard test the next day, some tricks on how to factor quadratics, or just the peace of mind that an algebra tutor can provide, Study Hut is the prime choice for Manhattan Beach algebra tutoring. Since opening our doors in 2006, we’ve helped hundreds of students succeed in Algebra: the subject that gives them the foundation for all future math classes at high school and later in college.
Armed with advanced degrees in math and engineering, tutors like ours at Study Hut are not only qualified, but also fully dedicated to the success of our students. Besides having extensive tutoring experience, our tutors are local. This means that they went to the same schools as their students and even had the same teachers. If you want someone to give you the inside scoop on how to succeed in “the hard teacher’s” algebra class, Study Hut can help out.
All algebra students are paired with the best tutor for the student’s needs and preferences. All sessions include study skills and organization help and a short generic academic check-up. From there, we move on to the math. Whether it’s review, answering questions on difficult topics, or studying for a test, our one-on-one sessions are always productive. We also don’t just stress doing the algebra correctly; we really want to make sure the student understands the concepts. Short review quizzes at the end of sessions are common. If we notice any kind of red flag, we immediately get in touch with parents to devise a plan of attack. Algebra, brace yourself!
At Study Hut, we know that potential new students and their parents often have questions before starting Manhattan Beach algebra tutoring. That’s why all are welcome to schedule a free consultation with an experienced Study Hut manager. In the meantime, take a second to fill out the contact form on this page. We’d love to hear from you!
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.
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.
Teaching a student from home has its benefits. Homeschooling is essentially one-on-one instruction delivered from the comforts of one’s own home. Every student in the traditional classroom can testify to the myriad of distractions; other students are the often the culprit. At home, with only one instructor, and no other students, comprehension and retention rates can be recorded with hockeystick like improvements.
Installing a whiteboard at home can make the lessons fun!
At the end of the day, the material that 30 students have difficulty grasping, is readily understood and mastered by a homeschool student in a fraction of the time. Is the teaching so much better at home? Sometimes yes and sometimes no– it always depends on the instructor, in the same way that success in sports can be pinned to the coach. The real takeaway is the dramatic difference between the interaction of the instructor and the student. A classroom is often forced to move at the pace of the slower half of the class, and often times, caters to hand raising of the slowest individuals. This type of classroom tailored teaching is inevitable because everyone learns at a different rate. The unfortunate side effect of having to adjust the speed of the lesson is that regardless of the if the teacher moves a faster rate or slower rate, a group of students will ultimately be turned off by the process claiming that the teacher is moving too quickly and they dont understand, or too slowly, and the students are bored. Homeschooling directly combats with enigmatic catch-22 by tailoring one lesson at a time to one student at a time. A tailored one-on-one approach allows the student to absorb the lesson, regurgitate its elemental concepts, practice and move on. Extra attention can specifically be applied to individual points of confusion and similarly, less time can be spent when the student is quickly showing understanding at a proficient level or higher.
The richness of homeschool can be measured not only by test results, but testimonials. Students boast that they are able to surround themselves with a wider range and use of multimedia tools such as: youtube, computer programs, live experiments, and outdoor demonstrations. When all is said and done, textbooks are taught start to finish, an unheard of notion in traditional schools, students are stronger with their test scores, as a result of continual tailored instruction, and education is no longer viewed as a dreaded duty, but rather a meaningful pursuit because of a greater use of tied in outside applications.
