How do tutors know what to teach?
1. Preparing your plan begins with a conference call with the parent guardian.
Find out what the student’s needs are and the goals from the initial conference call. In short, the things you want to get out of this call are a better understanding of the student’s personality, their experience with the subject, and their affinity towards the subject. Find out if the student is behind, at level, or accelerated. Also, learn about what expectations does the parent/guardian has.
If you didn’t find out this information from the first conference call, you can always ask these questions to the student during the first lesson, or talk to the parent/guardian after the first lesson follow-up.
2. Provide an initial assessment.
Select an assessment for the level discussed during the initial call. Use either a pre-test, end-of-course test, practice exam, or a look at samples of completed work (homework, tests, or portfolio).
Based on that assessment (and the initial call) determine as best possible what are the students’ strengths and weaknesses. Four areas you want to check are:
- skills – knowledge of how to approach a problem
- concepts – knowledge of facts
- study habits – how to retain knowledge
- motivation and mindset
3. Design the outline of your curriculum.
Since you are still getting to learning about your student, only write curriculum for 8-10 sessions out. (And, if you are tutoring a group session or class, then you will want to document these in detail. As you will want to stick with this outline as much as possible.) Then revisit your learning goals after those 8 weeks.
Select textbooks, workbooks/worksheets, online curriculum, online activities, videos that will match the goals. While it is great to have specifics, just knowing the chapters/sections or topics that you will cover is a great start. You can narrow in on what you need before the lesson each week.
- Pick the chapters or sections out of the textbooks.
- Select the workbook or worksheets.
- Choose out online programs.
- Select homework assignments that will revisit areas of weakness that you cover during the tutoring sessions.
Expert tip: Keep a list of your favorite activities. It will be extremely useful. I certainly wish I had done this sooner!
4. Determine how you will run the tutoring sessions.
For a simple setup for a tutoring session select activities for the beginning, middle, and end.
Here are a couple of examples.
Example 1
- beginning: review homework
- middle: new material
- end: review activities
Example 2
- beginning: drill activity (warm up)
- middle: new material
- end: enrichment activities/games
Segmenting the lesson allows you to have different types of activities to run during your session. This is great for students who have shorter attention spans. Of course, if the student is highly engaged you may just work through problems or exercises the entire session.
5. Finally, communicate to the parent how you would like homework submitted if there is any.
Decide how you are going to grade/review the homework and now, you have your curriculum completed!
As tutors, we tailor our instruction to each student and their needs. So it is extremely helpful to have an outline of what you will teach a new student. It not only makes you more prepared (and professional). It sets the expectations with the parent and helps you to know if you have hit your goals.
I hope this helps you in writing your plan. Let me know what you think of this article.
And if you are interested in developing your skills as a tutor, we offer coaching sessions to help tutors develop skills that help their students make amazing transformations. You can sign up for a consultation here to see if our coaching program would be a good fit for you!
Happy tutoring!
