I was a math tutor in college, and many of the tutees would come into the tutor lab completely downtrodden, dreading their homework. I found the most helpful thing I could do with them was to focus more on getting them to understand the motivation behind what they had gone over in class that day, and in particular saying things like "now why would we do this" as soon as I could see in their face that it was clicking. Getting them to understand the why (and getting them to feel like they understood the why) was incredibly effective for helping them feel less insecure when going to class.