Strategies to try...

Sometimes it can be hard to come up with a creative activity or engaging strategy to use during your session. Here are some ideas to try if you feel like you want to bring something new to your session!

Strategies from a lead academic mentor:

•  I like to create a quiz based off of our prior session. I usually do this the first 1-3 times, to make sure they are internalizing the information weekly, as opposed to learning it all before an exam. I have them self correct using a red pen, to highlight their mistakes/what they need to study more. Once I feel they are ready, I have them design their own quizzes for themselves and have them bring it to our one-on-one session. They complete the quiz within the last 15 minutes of our session, and once again I have them correct.

Some take offs on that idea:

• Instead of having them design their own quizzes at home, you can also have them design some quiz questions as a closing activity and open with the quiz during the next session as a review and to gauge your students progress.
• Similarly, at the end of your session, as closing maybe, have your students write down a practice problem or question based on the material they learned during that day. Do this at the end of multiple sessions, and use these questions as a review before your next exam! Or bring them up at the next session to recap what happened at the previous session.

• An activity I've found to be helpful to students I refer to as "Math Fatal Errors." I put problems and their solutions up on the board and the students:
  
  1) state whether the solution is correct/incorrect
  2) if correct, explain why and show how it was completed
  3) if incorrect, use a red marker to address the errors made
  4) then, solve and explain what was done wrong to begin with.
  
  I find this activity to be helpful because students have to explain in words WHY a question is correct/incorrect. It is also nice because you can address common mistakes made in their algebraic reasoning and address them head on. It is also a nice chance for the students to correct work, which will be helpful on exams and homework when they will need to be able to correct their own work.

Hopefully one of these ideas will be useful in your session! If you have any new ideas to add, let us know!