Tutoring for me is more than just teaching someone how to apply what they know to exam questions, it is also the passing-on of study skills, a good attitude to learning, and confidence. I focus on meeting the student at their current level of ability and improving their skills and knowledge, setting the bar high, and successfuly guiding them through their present challenges. Read more about how I achieve this below.
Inital assessment
I meet with all my new students for a free chat to discuss any areas they are currently finding difficult. This meeting helps me to get an idea of their current strengths, study habits, and if they have had tuition in the past, what previously worked well for them. I then combine this with a review of any recent test papers to formulate an intial plan that is unique to each student, focussing on either fixing some fundamental misunderstandings, covering a topic in more detail, or working on some study or exam skills. Once this is in place, we can begin tutoring!
Tutoring, not teaching
Tutoring is all about providing the right environment for a student to thrive. You could say the exact same thing about the purpose of the school classroom, but not every student does as well as they could. If a student performs strongly in their other subjects or has shown a dip in performance from one year to the next, the capacity to do well is clearly there, but the student needs something other than more time in class to reach their potential.
Will the student improve with more teaching at school? Sometimes. The schoolteacher might not be a subject specialist or otherwise has limitations on what they know about the subject, in which case hiring somebody with more subject knowledge or a different perspective to reteach the material should work. I do sometimes have to reteach a topic the correct way, especially if the student missed some of the content due to absence. It would be a shame, though, to just use that time to reteach the content; tutoring offers much more through a one-to-one environment that is very different to the classroom. This affords a number of benefits to the tutee:
- Better engagement through active learning
- Building self-confidence through correct pacing and adding guidance or structure when needed
- Sufficient stretch and challenge for the most able
- Regular feedback and advice on how to improve
What happens in a typical tutorial
Each tutorial follows a few key stages:
- A check on progress and retention from previous tutorials
- Guidance and further help on any homework that was set
- A quick check to see how much they can do or know about a topic or skill already
- Teaching of the correct method, with guidance and structure to help build their skills
- Recap and check on the student’s understanding, see how much they can do on their own
- Suggestions for further work or practice, including worksheets and questions as appropriate
I believe active learning is essential for retention of information and skills, so I engage the student as much as possible during the tutorials. This involves pitching the tutorial at a level where the student feels confident enough to participate. It also involves getting the student interested in chemistry, so I relate examples and experiences from my time in research and development, from current news, and from areas of personal interest to the student.
Lighting the path and building independence
Seeing a student grow in confidence and ability is brilliant, especially when they have bounced back from a period of self-doubt. It is important though, given that they found themselves in difficulty once already, that they are equipped with skills that keep them on the right path in future. I include study skills and habits during my tutorials, with the aim of making them strong independent learners, capable of taking on the challenges they will face in the future.
How do they progress?
The majority of my GCSE students, over 80%, improve by two or more grades from their most recent mock exam.
My A-level students all improve their grades, with around two-thirds going on to achieve A or A star at A-level and enter their first choice university. More importantly, they feel much more at ease with their chemistry as can be seen from my feedback.