School’s finally out! Learning is put on hold for the summer… right? That’s not the case for many students who participate in tutoring throughout their summer break. Tutoring aims to either catch students up on material not understood during the school year, to polish the skills they’ve acquired that year or to start working on the skills they’ll need in the year to come. Tutoring is becoming an increasingly popular trend around the world, and TechSmith has the tools to ensure the experience is a success. We came across this great blog about tutoring that provided some key tutoring tips and wanted to share them along with some tips of our own!
Here are the Top 5 Tips for Tutoring according to tutoring-expert.com.
1. Students First
Always put your student’s best interests first.
We agree! Find out what they need to learn or work on and cater the tutoring sessions to those needs. Find the root of a student’s problem, and fix it. If they are having trouble with multiplication for example, is it because they haven’t had enough practice or did they never really master addition and subtraction?
2. Teach Learning, Not Content
Remember the old expression “teach a man to fish…”?
Students won’t benefit from simply memorizing facts and going through the motions of learning. It’s important they they learn the formulas for success in all subjects, not just math, and be able to apply these in the future. Tutors have the power to teach a child how to learn, and it doesn’t have to be difficult. Ask3 is a great tool in aiding this process. Students can take what they’ve learned in a particular session, and in a future session lead the tutor through the lesson on the iPad app. They not only are exposed to technology and reviewing the material, they are applying it and taking ownership of what they’ve learned. A tutor can record the lesson by the student and even make it available to other students that they are tutoring, creating a classroom setting without the physical classroom.
3. Make the Student do the Work
This piece of tutoring advice is crucial, because if you do your student’s work, even a little, you send the signal that he or she can’t do it. You could do more harm than good.
Ask3 can help with this. A tutor can easily record themselves doing a sample problem that a student can reference if they run into trouble. This way there is a sample to refer back to if needed, but the student is always doing the work. If a student needs help with a specific assignment, such as grammar for example, the tutor can whip up a quick tutorial prior to the session and they can go over it together learning the strategy. Upon completion of the lesson, the student can try this out for themselves, using the tutorial as a reference.
4. Tailor Your Teaching
The great advantage of tutoring over classroom teaching is your ability to make the material interesting and relevant for that particular student.
Tutoring can be done one on one or in small groups, but Ask3 allows for that one on one experience no matter the situation. Tailor the tutoring sessions to each student by utilizing Ask3 on the iPad. Create the same basic lesson for all who are on the same task, but tailor the lesson for each student by entering their favorite superhero or character into a story problem. All that has to be done is a simple name switch, and the lesson quickly becomes much more interesting to all!
5. Lead by Example
You might say, “I don’t know that word, either. When that happens, I get out my dictionary and look it up. Let’s do it together.”
By using an iPad during a lesson, there are unlimited resources right at the student’s fingertips. The lesson can not only be taught using Ask3, but students can learn to find answers for themselves instead of simply asking others for the answers. They quickly become much more self reliant, which is a valuable trait in the years to come.
School is indeed out for the summer, but learning doesn’t have to stop! Ask3 is a great resource for summer learning that not only tutors can utilize, but parents as well.