Need ideas for my tutee (math-related, primarily)

[Halcyon]

I am tutoring a rising 5th grade girl this summer and probably into the school year. She is public-schooled. To see where she stood with math, I gave her the end of year 3rd grade MM placement test. She got about 50-60% right, primarily the more straightforward computation questions and reading a clock questions. She could also add and subtract fractions with common denominators. Areas she struggled with:

-word problems. Absolutely no idea how to solve most of them.

-metric --couldn't answer one (this must not be covered in school)

-order of operations (none correct)

-estimating-not terrible, not great at this.

-place value (we went over this together, and she could not explain place value, and ended up "borrowing" from the wrong column)

 

So I was thinking of pulling questions from various sites on each of these topics and making up a few on my own, and going through them systematically. Alternatively, I could have her take the 2nd grade placement test and start there. I do want to teach her more conceptual math, but again, that will likely mean taking her back quite a ways. She really seems to struggle with basic concepts, so I think this is what I will have to do. Since I haven't worked with her before, I am finding it hard to know where to begin; does this make sense? With my own kids, I 'know' their weaknesses because I've been teaching them all along, but with this child, I feel like her problems are all over the map. :confused:

 

On another note, we are working on Language Arts. She struggles with punctuation and spelling, so I think that will be fairly straightforward. We're not going to do too much with grammar persay right now....I don't think copy work is the right approach here. I was thinking sort of a Daily Paragraaph Editing type thing, which she says she does a lot of in school....I am just not sure.

 

It's harder than it seems to "pick up in the middle" with a child, isn't it?