Just as I thought that I'd finally settled into a consistent routine with 4 students and 7.5 hours of tutoring per week, I had a new student come along. As of last Friday, I've moved back up to 5 (all Math this time, though) and somewhere around 9 hours each week (possibly more, depending upon how things go with the newest arrival).
This gives me a nice cross-section, as I now have students in Grades 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11 (just need a high school sophomore to fill out the run!). I've been getting increasingly familiar with the Math curricula across those grades, and it's been interesting to see which topics are causing the most trouble. Only one of the five students knew his or her times tables when we started, although each of the others is well on the way to having them down pat by now. Fraction arithmetic shows up as a weakness pretty consistently, as do things like handling negative numbers (for those who've encountered them already) and dealing with variables. Those are the holes that are most glaring because the lack of understanding poses the biggest threat going forward; but even more benign skills such as Metric conversion, understanding how to calculate percentages and converting between fractions and decimals appear to be suffering. Of course, I'm only seeing students who need tutoring help. But I can't help but suspect that it's more widespread than just that.
Anyway, there's no shortage of work for me, it appears... which is a classic example of "good news, bad news" if ever I saw one.
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