Chemistry tutoring in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Kolu is software. Nobody from Kolu will drive to your house in Pittsburgh, and we have no office there. If you want a person, this page says how we would look for one. If the question is which skill is missing, we can help with that part.
Public schools in Pittsburgh are run by Pittsburgh Public Schools. No state test in Pennsylvania covers chemistry. What counts is the grade the teacher gives and, for students in the AP course, the AP Chemistry exam in May.
The wall in chemistry is the mole
Chemistry is the first science course that is mostly arithmetic with units, and it catches students who did fine in biology by memorizing. Once the course reaches stoichiometry, every problem is a chain of ratios. Grams become moles, moles of one substance become moles of another, and those go back to grams. A student who is shaky on proportional reasoning can't hold the chain together, and rereading the chapter won't change that.
The course also builds on itself faster than students expect. Balancing equations in October is assumed in November, and by January nobody is going to teach it again.
The problem on the page
How many grams of water form from 4 g of hydrogen?
Stoichiometry, grams to grams
Chemistry
Converting between grams and moles
Chemistry · rests on the one below
Balancing chemical equations
Chemistry · rests on the one below
Ratios and proportions
Grade 7 math · usually where it started
What Pennsylvania tests, by grade
| Grade | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reading and writing | PSSA | PSSA | PSSA | PSSA | PSSA | PSSA | Not tested | Not tested | Not tested | Not tested |
| Math | PSSA | PSSA | PSSA | PSSA | PSSA | PSSA | Not tested | Not tested | Not tested | Not tested |
| Science | Not tested | Not tested | PSSA Science | Not tested | Not tested | PSSA Science | Not tested | Not tested | Not tested | Not tested |
- PSSA (Pennsylvania System of School Assessment): reading and writing, math, grades 3 through 8
- PSSA Science (Pennsylvania System of School Assessment in Science): science, grades 5 and 8
Testing dates, graduation rules and the one deadline families miss are on a separate page. Pittsburgh guide
Kolu finds the missing skill and goes back to it
Kolu breaks chemistry into skills and tests them in order, so a student stuck on stoichiometry finds out whether the trouble is the mole, the balanced equation or the ratio. Numeric answers are checked by code, and wrong ones are sorted by what kind of wrong they are. Skills come back for review days later, which matters in a course where October is assumed in January.
Kolu does not call a skill mastered after one right answer. That takes correct work on different kinds of problems on different days, and a skill that fades gets brought back.
Kolu is not test prep for PSSA. It has no bank of released questions. It teaches the skills the test draws on, and it will not do tonight's homework.
When to hire a person instead
If the class is AP Chemistry and the exam is weeks away, a tutor who knows the free-response format is the better spend. The same goes for a student who needs someone to sit with them through a lab report.
In Pittsburgh, ask the school first. Teachers know who tutors, and a counselor at Pittsburgh Public Schools can tell you what the district already offers at no cost. After that, try students at University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University or Community College of Allegheny County, who took these courses recently and usually charge less than an agency.
Whoever you hire, ask one question before the first session: how will you find out what my child doesn't know? If the answer is that they will go over the homework, keep looking.
Free for one subject, $15 a month for 5
Kolu is free for one subject at a time, with one full skill check every 30 days and up to 4 sessions a day. Plus is $15 a month, or $120 for a year, and covers 5 subjects at once with unlimited skill checks. A learner under 13 needs a parent or guardian to set up the account.