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It’s a rare tutor who doesn’t want to redefine their tutoring sessions so that they become better suited to their students’ needs and thus boost their academic performance. Below are some simple yet effective recommendations that can go a long way towards helping you become a more effective and in-demand professional.
Communicate with Parents
As a tutor, you’re part of a student’s support network alongside their parents and guardians. So, actually connecting with a parent or a guardian will help to actually make sure that you’re all on the same page in supporting your student. By doing so, you can make your life as a tutor a lot easier.
Track the Numbers
Track the numbers, but remember that the numbers are not everything. Keep tabs on the student performance in their assessments. But if it isn’t linear, don’t assume this is a bad thing or your fault. Remember that lots of different factors can actually affect your students’ academic performance and assessment abilities on a particular day. A lack of sleep, anxiety levels, off day, and lots of other factors can get in the way of your student’s academic success. But if you manage to keep track of their progress, the odds are good that this process shows growth down the line. Rather than just pinpointing one assessment and assuming that either you haven’t done a good enough job, focus on the achievements you as a tutor have already got and keep on working on your tutee’s school performance.
Use the Right Material
It’s of paramount importance that you use quality materials well-suited to your tutee’s personal education level and academic achievements. Alongside such vital things as textbooks, whiteboards, and laptops, you need to devote enough time and effort to creating personalized and differentiated learning materials like board games, specialized learning apps, homework plans, etc. You can also create flashcards with the help of dedicated graphic design tools, which not only help create effective design for event marketing, but also craft helpful educational graphic materials for your students.
If you adopt the right tutoring techniques and materials, you’ll be able to tailor every tutoring session to your student’s individual needs. You will be able to tweak your tutoring plan and make necessary improvements as you go along and thus boost your tutee’s chances of successful learning.
Include Interactive Activities in Tutoring Sessions
A great way to get the ball rolling at the start of your lesson and get your student engaged is to give them a short task or test their understanding. This will help you keep them motivated and also figure out which moments require more of your attention and improvement.
Look at the Bigger Picture
As a tutor, it can be easy to focus only on a student’s academic performance, but it’s definitely helpful to touch base with your tutee and evaluate if anything else is affecting their performance. For example, mentioning the importance of taking breaks while studying is a great way to remind your student of the need of maintaining a healthy balance and avoiding burnout. It also would be particularly wise to help your students figure out stress management techniques and strategies. Not only will this assist your tutees in lowering their learning-related anxiety levels and combating stress, but also help study more efficiently.
Share Personal Experiences
Integrating analogies of your own life and study experiences is a great way to demonstrate your first-hand understanding of your tutees’ needs and build rapport with them.
Keep Notes
As a tutor, you will want to have Sticky Notes or other type of note-taking software on your laptop with subheadings for each of your students. You will want to record your upcoming sessions, as well as notes specific to them. You’ll also want to write down your observations and anything you think is particularly effective or ineffective in a previous session. Track the tasks you had to do and note down ideas for your future sessions to boost the overall effectiveness of your tutoring sessions. The habit of taking notes during your lessons will come in particularly handy when you start to get a lot of students and need to keep track of their achievements.
You Don’t Have to Know Everything
Remember that you don’t have to know everything. If your student asks you a question that you can’t confidently answer, this provides you a great opportunity to look into this information later. You should view this as a valuable chance to upskill yourself. And this actually could be fairer for your students, since in such a case you’re not just making up a response on the spot, being unsure about its correctness, but actually taking time to find out proper information. It’s also a good idea to send them a worksheet or explanatory material rather than answer verbally. This can help your tutees retain important information.