The first thing I plan on telling students is to be very organized and neat while working out math problems. In my experience, a lot of wrong answers stem from simple mistakes, like forgetting a negative sign or forgetting an additional term. Second, I plan on teaching students how to recognize which techniques are required to be applied to a specific problem. From there, the problem can be broken down into parts, and the correct techniques can be applied to each part. Then, putting all the pieces together should lead to the correct answer.

I usually take 5-10 minutes to discuss personal hobbies and interests. This way, the student and I can have a personal connection and feel more comfortable during the session. After this, I would ask the student to perform a self-assessment of his/her math skills, including areas of weakness. From this, I can cater the tutoring session to spend more time on skills that may need improvement.