As a tutor, you may sometimes wonder if you’re doing enough to help your student learn.
You want to deliver the best to your student and help them to the best of your ability, but how?
Here are some quick tips that you must follow to have fruitful lessons with your students.
Plan ahead
Planning is always the first and most crucial step.
If you go into a lesson with the goal of just teaching your students the topic plainly, students might get bored and their learning will not be optimal.
You need to plan hands-on activities that are going to help your students learn in a more fun way.
Time management is also crucial when it comes to lessons. The duration of tuition lessons are very limited and so, planning to the exact minute is necessary.
Estimate how long each activity is going to take. Run through the plan in your head, foresee any situations that may arise, and have backup plans.
For example, you need to ask yourself which parts of the lesson you can leave out if you are running out of time.
In a good lesson plan, there should also be appropriately-spaced breaks to ensure that your students are focused and not too stretched out.
Consider the different learning styles
It is important to know that no matter how flawless of a lesson plan you have, you still have to take into consideration your students’ different learning styles.
Every student learns differently, so it is important that you are flexible in adjusting your lesson to suit their needs.
The main different types of learning styles are:
Visual
Your student needs diagrams, flow charts, illustrations, etc. to understand concepts better.
Auditory
Clear verbal explanations help your student to learn.
Kinesthetic
Your student learns well when they have hands-on activities. Practical lessons where they get to fiddle around with physical materials are beneficial for them.
Reading/writing
Your student learns well through theories, textbooks and writing notes. It would be helpful for you to print out notes or guides for them.
Practise differentiated instruction by allowing your students to use the method most suitable for them to learn.
Announce your lesson outcomes
Even after going through a fun and meaningful lesson, students may not know what they have learnt and how they can apply them.
It is a good idea to let your students know of the objectives that they will achieve before you begin.
At the end of the lesson, reinforce the learning objectives again so that they can apply what they have learnt.
You can also establish a schedule so that your students know what they’re doing at every point in time.
This helps students stay motivated to learn as they can visualise when they need to be paying attention and space out their attention spans.
Check students’ understanding before and after your lesson
It is good to always check in on your students’ understanding at the start and end of every lesson.
Checking their understanding before the lesson allows you to gauge the pace that you can teach at, and checking after the lesson shows you if there are any gaps that you need to bridge for the next lesson.
You can use tools and software such as Kahoot! or Mentimeter to check their understanding in a way that’s engaging for them.
After the lesson, you can also ask for their feedback on how you could have taught differently to make it more fun and educational for them next time.
Make sure that your students are paying attention
During the lesson, it is important that you look out for whether your students are lost or distracted.
If your students are not giving you their fullest attention, it could put all your efforts in planning and executing the lesson to waste.
If they are finding it difficult to concentrate, ask them what can help them to focus better: making the activity more physical? Allowing them to move around?
Make sure that they listen to your instructions well and understand them so that they can carry out the activities.
Conclusion
Being a successful tutor means reaching out to your students and helping them to gain knowledge in engaging ways.
To do so, you need to follow these tips and put in conscientious effort to ensure that they take away useful learning outcomes.
I hope that this article has been helpful for you to take your tutoring to the next level!
Want more tutoring tips? Read our other articles here.
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