Dealing with so many students at once can be really difficult. Especially when they are of a young age, they have a higher tendency to be hyperactive, unable to sit still and disrupting your lesson.
How then can you do your job effectively as a group tutor?
Know your students and their standards well
Take the effort to remember your students’ names, their standards, learning styles, attention spans, etc. This can help you to teach more effectively since some students are more independent and require less help, as compared to others.
You should try to arrange for a faster learner to sit with a slower learner so that they can help each other. Explaining the concept will reinforce the faster learner’s understanding of the subject and bridge any gaps.
Get the faster learners to help the slower ones when they are finished with their work, because students who have nothing to do after finishing their work early will start to get fidgety and distracted, causing a distraction to the rest of the class.
With the students helping each other, you will then have fewer things to manage at once.
Make full use of the whiteboard
Say, a student raises their hand and asks you a question. Instead of explaining to only that one student at a time, bring the question up to the class and write down your explanation on the board.
If you explain individually, you will be wasting a lot of time repeating yourself, because chances are, many other students might have the same question. Some may even be too shy to ask and would be glad that you explained it to the entire class.
If you only explain it verbally, students may tend to forget, or they may not have reached the same question yet due to their differing working speeds. Keeping explanations on the whiteboard will allow you to only have to explain one thing once.
Get students to take notes
Many students are lazy to write notes and hence ask the same question over and over. Make it a point for them to do notetaking.
Encourage them to bring their own notebook so that they can write down their learning points and refer to them easily.
Call on students to answer your questions
Students may be lazy or shy in a large group setting and might not want to voice out if they don’t have to. Hence, it’s very difficult for tutors to check the students’ understanding by directing questions to the whole class.
By picking out individual students to answer your questions, you can find out which students are not keeping up with your teaching, and are keeping quiet about it because they are lazy or shy. Most students will feel obligated to answer if you call them out specifically.
Bring rewards
If your students are still not responding well even though you’ve called them out, giving rewards for class participation is a magic trick that teachers and tutors adopt to get their students going.
You don’t have to spend a bomb on them; you can buy small snacks or even little tokens in bulk just to spur them on. Small snacks usually help to boost their energy and keep them awake during lessons.
Otherwise, you might have an unattentive and passive class.
Be firm
With so many students in the same room, group tuition classes may tend to get very rowdy and noisy. As a tutor, it is your job to have them under control and make sure that there is a conducive learning environment.
You don’t have to scream your head off all the time, just make sure that you’re able to firmly discipline them when they are starting to get out of control.
Many tutors are too soft or kind-hearted to be able to be stern with the students, and that results in students taking advantage of their nice tutors, displaying bad behaviours during tuition time.
Make sure that they minimise their noise level and are not running around in class or distracting their classmates.
Conclusion
Being a group tutor is no easy feat! It takes a lot of patience, people management and time management skills.
Many tutors who prefer to give undivided attention to one student at a time would prefer private tuition. If you’re a tutor who is looking for or interested in trying out private tuition, register with SmileTutor today!
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