Chemistry tutoring in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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.

What Wisconsin tests, by grade

Testing dates, graduation rules and the one deadline families miss are on a separate page. Milwaukee 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 the Forward Exam. 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 Milwaukee, ask the school first. Teachers know who tutors, and a counselor at Milwaukee Public Schools can tell you what the district already offers at no cost. After that, try students at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Marquette University, Milwaukee School of Engineering or Milwaukee Area Technical College, 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.