One, for those who are thinking they might want to start a tutoring business, DO IT. NO ONE is out there teaching kids math like this...well, I can't really say that anymore because actually quite a few people are now using these techniques to teach math...more than six years ago when I started this nonsense anyway, but you know what I mean. The number of people doing it this way is very, very SMALL. You should have no trouble finding a few parents who understand that giving their child, particularly if the child happens to be female, a real head start and are willing to pay well you for it. Don't undercut yourself.
You can charge decent money because of this, especially if you have been to several Friday trainings and/or have gotten passwords and watched all the videos (and played along with your blocks) on the Parent Teacher Training Page (there are quite a few more Hours about to added there BTW). Ask yourself where else are they going to get this? From me? I can only do so many students at a time and my time for teaching students is just about come to an end...I am interested in training teachers and ultimately training trainers and master trainers to replace myself.
Two, when teaching older students who have massive holes like this child in their math knowledge and basic math facts it is important to preserve the child's self esteem. With younger remedial students playing like this is cool because in kid culture "everybody knows algebra is HARD" so although we are factoring polynomials not so much to learn algebra and distributive theory but more to learn addends and multiplication, the older students don't feel "dumb" because after all we are still doing algebra, and the younger students feel smart because after all we are still doing algebra. Get it? I think you will find this is a recurring theme here on this blog. I use third and fourth power algebra to accomplish this too.
Three, it should become abundantly clear after watching this video that having a calculator in hand wouldn't help him factor an expression like x² + 9x + 18...you have to know your addends, which will make repetitive addition (which some call multiplication) easy and fast and will bring home the concept that numbers are made up of other numbers and that there are many ways to express any number...as the sum of two (or more) numbers as the difference of two numbers as the product of two (or more) numbers or as the quotient of two numbers...
I also have another video with a 7 year old where you can see having played with square numbers and being familiar with addends and ratios and fractions makes trig EASY. But if you can't even recognize a square number when you see one...well...an "F" is much more likely than an "A".
Get a password, get a couple of my books and get going. Trainings on Fridays has become "a thing", cost is 20 bucks for 1 to 4 hours, lately they have been going for 4...if you come for an hour it's $20 if you come for all for hours it's $20, starts at 8am HST...you need gmail vid chat and you need to have the video plug in ALREADY INSTALLED. Email me for more info. I know you think 4 hours is a long time but trust me: time flies when you are having math...ask anybody that has come it won't feel like four hours.
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