When a family engages a math tutor in Surrey, the temptation on both sides is to open the textbook at the current chapter and begin. It is the obvious move, and it is usually the wrong one. The chapter causing trouble this week is rarely where the difficulty started.
Here is what the first three sessions should look like instead, and why each one is arranged the way it is.
Session one: find the gap, not the chapter
Mathematics is cumulative in a way that few other subjects are. A Grade 11 student finding rational expressions difficult is very often a Grade 9 student whose factoring was never fully secured. The Grade 11 material is not the problem. It is where the earlier gap finally became visible.
So the first session is diagnostic. A good tutor will work backwards through a short set of questions that get progressively simpler until the student is answering comfortably, and that point is the real starting line.
Three things should come out of session one:
- The specific prerequisite skill that is not secure.
- Whether the difficulty is conceptual, procedural, or a matter of setting work out.
- A short plan, described to the student in plain terms so they understand what is happening and why.
Students find this session unexpectedly encouraging. Being told “you can do this, the gap is two years back and it is a small one” reframes the whole situation.
Session two: rebuild, in the right order
The second session addresses the gap directly. Not a general revision of the earlier year, but the specific skill, taught properly and practised until it is automatic.
Factoring is the most common example we see. A student who has to think hard about factoring has no attention left for the actual Grade 11 idea sitting on top of it. Rebuild the factoring to the point where it is automatic, and the Grade 11 content stops feeling impossible, because the student can now spend their thinking on the new part.
The word to listen for at home after this session is “oh”. It usually arrives when something that was memorised finally makes sense.
Session three: return to the current work
Only now does the current chapter come out, and it is deliberate. The student now approaches this week’s homework with the prerequisite secure, which means the tutor can teach the new idea rather than firefight the old one.
Session three also establishes the working pattern for the term: what happens with homework, how questions are brought to the session, and how a problem is set out on paper. Presentation matters more than students expect. A significant share of lost marks in senior mathematics comes from work that is correct but unreadable, or from a step skipped mentally that the marker cannot see.
What you should hear as a parent after three sessions
You should be able to get a clear answer to three questions:
- What was actually wrong? (A named skill, not “he needs more practice”.)
- What has been done about it?
- What are we working on for the next month?
Any tutor who has genuinely done the diagnostic work will answer all three without hesitation.
How long recovery usually takes
It varies with the size of the gap, and being honest about the range is more useful than a single promise.
- One missing skill - two to four weeks to secure, and homework becomes noticeably easier.
- An unsteady year underneath the current one - six to ten weeks of steady work alongside the current course.
- Several years of accumulated gaps - a term or more, with visible progress throughout, which is what keeps a student engaged.
In every case, understanding improves before the report card does. A term mark averages the whole reporting period, so a student who turns a corner in week four still carries weeks one to three in the average.
The courses where this matters most
Two points in the BC sequence produce the most requests for help, and both are prerequisite problems rather than content problems.
- Grade 9 to Foundations of Mathematics and Pre-Calculus 10. The step up in algebraic fluency is significant, and students who have relied on pattern-matching find that a fuller command of the algebra now pays off.
- Pre-Calculus 11. The busiest course we teach. It assumes complete comfort with factoring, fractions and rearranging, and it moves quickly.
Starting well
If your child is finding mathematics harder this year than last, the useful first step is a diagnosis rather than more of the same practice. Our trial class is $50 and includes exactly the diagnostic session described above, along with a written summary of what we found.
Our centre is at 8806 141A Street, Surrey, BC V3V 7W5, and sessions run in person or online. Call 604-725-6845 to arrange a time.
