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Tutoring advice for struggling students

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1 - start each session with a recap of the previous two sessions

  • unfortunately if a student is unable to share everything they learnt from the past two sessions it means that they don't remember it
  • it could mean that they didn't spend any time recapping it or that they found it hard or that they didn't understand it in the first place - this is irrelevant
  • the point is that there is no point teaching more content if the previous content hasn't sunk in
  • they should be able to explain it with very little help/hints - just give them a few prompts and let them speak
  • if not, no worries just take your time and go through it again - dont worry about moving onto new content

2 - some students don't do homework

  • i am writing this page assuming the worst case scenario
  • either the student is lazy/ too busy with other priorities/ doesn't have the confidence to do any independent work
  • my challenge is - how would you adapt your tutoring if homework was not possible at all
  • (fyi - i agree that students should be doing homework but sometimes we do have to adapt to them for whatever reason)
  • it could be that you give them 20 mins out of a 40 min session to do homework-related tasks, or that you do more frequent homework
  • or use 1 lesson as a normal lesson and the other lesson as a homework/recap session until they start knowing what to do on their own

3 - baby steps

I used to ask all students to aim for an A or A* but this doesn't make a difference if the student lacks confidence.

If you could share with them a checklist (could be printed or probably better if its your own checklist), it helps them see what progress they are making each week.

Then with each part of the checklist I personally include 5 or 6 precise summary questions so that they can test themselves on exactly what you want them to remember.

These were my notes for Inflation and I included questions at the bottom. Someone who likes Maths probably prefers having a method so they might find the creative aspect of English chaotic. Personally I enjoyed English Literature but I hated Art and didn't like English Language because I didn't know exactly what I had to remember for each topic.