Comments by Tutors

The most thrilling part of the tutoring occurred when her mom said the equations with fractions were finally making sense to her and [student] agreed. The next day they returned to say they were very happy when they left tutoring because they finally understood fractions.

She asked if the sticks method could be used abstractly on her paper. She then proceeded to show the tutors an example of how she could do it on her tests. We were very excited to see her figure this out on her ownÉ Her mom was also impressed with the method and said that it helped her to understand what was happening in adding and subtracting fractions.

We worked really hard and used a lot of concrete materials to teach [him] how to add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators. He really understood this as he worked problems using concrete materials. It was almost as if you could see a light bulb going off in his head! I had such a great feeling after we worked a few problems together. He had a huge smile on his face and said, “I finally get it!”

[The students] understood quickly how the sticks can represent individual fractions. We then shows [them] how to make equivalent fractions, and she seemed to catch on quickly.

Using the sticks helped her to work slowly through the problems and see what she was doing. Once she understood what was happening, she was able to make the transition to abstract independently and show us how she would perform the equations on a test.

Comments by General and Special Education Teachers

“I did not think students this young could acquire these skills.”

“I will never teach algebra the same.”

“[the students] did really well”

Comments by Students who took time to contact us

(A student who failed algebra once and was currently in Algebra 2) “I never understood these concepts in Algebra 1 and now I can work with them.”

(A student who failed algebra before using this model) “I will teach my brother to learn algebra this way so he does not go through what I did.”

Sample Comments