At face value, tutoring someone seems like a pretty easy task. You show up, study & practice the material, and leave. However, don’t you want to be THE BEST tutor out there? Of course you do. That being said, today I want to share a quick and effective tip to make the most of your sessions. Remember, you have only one hour (usually) with your student, so what is one way you can tackle the material in a way that is most beneficial to them? Easy. Start with the most difficult problems first.
I know, this seems obvious, but sometimes we don’t do this because it’s only natural to start at the beginning of an assignment and work your way through until time is up. What I’ve noticed with the online software that assigns homework to students is that it usually puts the easier problems at the beginning and the more complex ones at the end. So, if possible, skip to the end of the assignment, begin with the last problem and work your way backwards. By doing this, you tackle the more challenging questions first, and if you don’t finish the assignment, you’ve left the easy stuff for the student to finish on their own time. There is one caveat to this process that should be considered. It should be assumed and necessary that the student has already mastered the basic skills for the unit. For example, the other day I was working with a 5th grader on long division. He knows the process like a master! So, what was my job to do at that time? Well, since the word problems were at the end of the assignment, and setting them up was difficult for him, we started there! Our job as tutors is to help the student grow beyond their present capabilities, and you’ll only accomplish that by working on the hard stuff. Who wants to get paid to just sit there and watch them do homework? Not I! That’s my advice for today! Be the best you can be! Happy Tutoring! I am sure you have heard this phrase many times, “Practice makes perfect.” It is so simple to understand, yet depending on what we want to perfect and what our personal likes are, it can be easy or difficult to implement a plan for consistent and meaningful practice. Since we are talking about math here on this blog, I can say from experience that it is challenging to put one in place, but I will explain how we can best do so.
In the context of tutoring, we meet with our students once or twice per week, or on the rare occasion, once every other week. The latter is not a schedule that I encourage because if you think about it, that gives you just two hours per month with your student. Unless your student is a motivated self-learner, this just is not enough time to put a dent in their progress. However, I do understand why families would take this approach, and I want to explain how we as tutors can make the best of it. Most importantly, we need to communicate clear and reasonable expectations with the parents of our students. They need to know that only so much can be accomplished in just two hours per month. There are ways to get around this and it requires more effort on the tutor’s and student’s part, but a minimal amount of time. As you, the tutor, prepare for each meeting, it would be a great idea to also prepare a work packet of sorts. This can be a printed version, digital version, or both. The point is to provide something for your student at the end of your session and encourage him or her to work on it for about 15 minutes per day until you meet again. That is a reasonable amount of time, even if they are busy with other school assignments and/or extracurricular activities. To hold them accountable is the most challenging part of this process. I remedy this with weekly check-in emails and encourage them to send me work they have already completed from the packet for review. All communication is done via email, and it is a good way to keep the math conversation going even though you are not physically meeting. Most students are not going to want to do this, but you should do your best to consistently push and challenge them. We are teachers, aren’t we? It’s our job to create an atmosphere of some challenge to help our students grow. What if the student doesn’t do the work? That is a completely legitimate concern. In spite of this, I would encourage you to continue to be there for them but give them digital versions of your work packets. At least you’ll save money on printer ink! On a more important and serious note, have a clear conversation with the parents about what you have been doing and provide a gentle recommendation for the student to make time for the extra practice. After that, there is nothing more you can do, so just make the most of those two hours per month! I encourage you to try this out and see what happens! Happy Tutoring! For most of my students, math is a drag to begin with. I get it. It’s difficult and not the most fun activity to do. As a tutor, I don’t take offense-I’m here to try and make learning math a lot easier and less of a drag.
One of the harder things to learn in math are all the new formulas that come into play in Algebra and Geometry. There are many of them! To commit all of them to memory causes a lot of anxiety amongst students, but it’s one of the most important things to master because without them, you can’t solve a problem that needs them. I’m here to say that there is an easy, subtle way to memorize them without having to go through the painful process of writing them all out on flashcards and then spending countless time memorizing them. I personally think it’s too repetitive of a task that causes the mind to fall asleep and therefore one decreases the ability to retain the information. Let’s talk about a more strategic way of memorizing these formulas. It’s a pretty simple method! As you sit down to complete your assignment for the day, all you must do is write the formula you are using at the beginning of each problem. Say, for example, you have to use the formula to find the distance between two points. Well, on each problem, write out the distance formula and then proceed to use it appropriately. Eventually you will memorize it due to the repetitive writing of it before each problem, and eventually you won’t have to write it out any more. The nice thing about this method is that you are breaking up the memorization process in intervals: you write out the formula, solve the problem, and repeat. It’s not the same as trying to remember all the variables in a formula and reviewing them using flashcards over and over again. At the very least, you take a break from the formula as you solve the problem on the homework assignment before going back to it again. Also, the fact the you are writing it out also helps in memory retention. Again, unlike using flashcards, you are only seeing it. With this alternative method, you are seeing and writing them out. Another tip I can give here: As you learn the formulas from each lesson of your math class, it’s a good idea to keep a record of them on one sheet of paper. Save this reference sheet of formulas so you can easily pull them out come exam time. This will save you time, so you don’t have to write them all over again. Give this method a try and feel free to let me know how it worked for you! Happy Learning! Circles, Circles, Circles! How to master these deceptively simple shapes in your geometry class.5/17/2023
As the 2022-23 school year comes to a close, I want to shed light on one of the most frustrating topics in geometry. At this time of year, students are well into the unit on circles. As simple as the circle may be, this devious little shape has sooo many vocabulary terms, formulas, and special diagrams associated with it. My word of advice to all students and teachers alike is to make sure the vocabulary is memorized right away. I know it’s probably the last thing any student wants to be thinking about as they daydream and look forward to their fun times ahead during the summer, but believe me, if you don’t get that vocabulary down, you will not succeed in the circle unit. I also want to emphasize that the math involved does not go beyond basic algebra, which you should have mastered at this point, so memorizing a bit of vocabulary should be a breeze. Here are my tips and resources to help you:
That’s pretty much it! You can do this-it’s just a matter of putting some time into it. As a seasoned tutor, my biggest recommendation is to practice this during school hours where you will have the opportunity to ask your teacher questions if you need to. Take advantage of the time in class, stay focused and away from your phone. Do you really want to have homework after school? I didn’t think so! Happy Learning! The other day I showed up to a lesson, and as we began, I soon found out that the student had fallen behind on some of their online assignments. I quickly thought, “How did I not notice this? My clients are paying good money for me to help their child succeed and they are falling behind…nooo!” I was a bit nervous about the situation because, well, I pride myself in offering the best quality service as a tutor. It sort of hit me in the gut. However, I had no time for self-pity and quickly did what I needed to do to resolve the situation. First, and foremost, I communicated the dilemma to the parents. They deserve and always need to know what’s going on. Secondly, I explained to them how we can quickly resolve it. My priority that day was to have the student complete as many of the assignments as possible, while still learn the new content for the week. Sometimes it’s just a balancing act, and that’s what I had to do that day. At the end of our meeting, Dad asked me how to best prepare his son for our lessons going forward. We had a brief, but great discussion and the situation was resolved within a week. It was to my great relief to say the least! Now, here are my words of wisdom so that this doesn’t happen to you:
There isn’t much more to it than that. The lesson I learned here is that I need to be more like the parent and double-check that all our bases our covered as to where assignments are listed. Sometimes teachers post them on different places online so it can be confusing. But once that’s cleared up, your child will be well on their way to getting everything done on time and having the best meetings they can possibly have with their tutor. I hope this information is useful for you! Happy Tutoring! When it comes to study habits, in a perfect world our children would take the initiative to finish all their homework on time, with focus & accuracy, and ace all their tests. As you know, the world is not perfect. It’s full of distractions, our kids are busy with sports & hobbies, and things happen that are outside of our control. That’s perfectly ok and I want you to know that despite all those things, we as parents have a lot of potential to greatly influence our kids for them to create some pretty solid study habits. Here are a few tips to set them up for success:
Excellent math tutors abound a plenty, so how are you going to stand out from the rest of the pack and offer the best session to your students? Need a degree from MIT? How about a masters or PhD? Maybe a teaching credential? The answers are No. No. No. Say what?! Maybe you are thinking you’ve got to have a lot of great experience and a degree from a top university, and although that helps, it doesn’t have to be the case. In my opinion, I think that the only factors that matter are mastery of the topic you are going to teach, a few teaching strategies, and noble work ethic. There are, of course, other important attributes, but these, I think, are the heart of a solid tutoring session. Let’s go into detail for each of the aspects mentioned above: Mastery of the Topic You Are Going to Teach. I think it goes without saying that you should know your stuff, right? The best tutors will know all their formulas off the top of their head. They will know all the skills needed to master any topic. If a student sends you a list of concepts they need to study, you should know exactly what they are talking about and what resources to pull together for them. No need to say much more about this. Teaching Strategies. Now we are talking about what to do from the time the lesson starts until it ends. First, and foremost, know what you are covering and make a quick assessment as to what can be accomplished in one session. If it’s just one idea, then your student is likely to achieve mastery in one sitting. In more advanced math, especially in honors classes, there can be several topics covered. If you don’t feel that you can finish everything, at the very least, cover at least a few problems from each topic that the student needs to go over. They can finish the rest on their own. Remember, your goal as a tutor is to help the student understand the material at a master level, not necessarily finish their homework with them. The student should be accountable for that anyway. Once you’ve completed your assessment, it’s time to get to work. This is usually how it goes for me: warm-up (skills student needs to strengthen), teach topic (guided practice and Q&A; I explain steps with my own problem, and they simultaneously apply those steps to their homework problem), student completes problems independently (observe their process; Q&A; take a note of areas that need improvement and work on that particular skill before moving on), POP QUIZ! (one or two questions on what they just practiced completely independently-get them in “quiz mode”), and have the student teach the concept back to you. Repeat and modify as needed. You’ll notice that in all the steps mentioned, the student is continuously active, even in your teaching moments. This is intentional so that they are constantly learning and gives them no opportunity to zone out. You only have one sitting with them, which is usually an hour, so make the most of it! Noble Work Ethic. What exactly do I mean here? You may be thinking that all tutors are noble. Well, just like in any industry, there is a range of quality. Be the best you can be by doing the following: be present with your student at all times (stay off your cell during meeting…it’s just rude), observe your student’s process, ask them questions, encourage them to ask you questions, keep them focused, have them practice as much as possible, communicate with their parents about their progress and how they can improve. Applying these methods are sure to get you on your way to 5 gold stars! Happy Tutoring! When it comes to finding the right tutor, there are several considerations to take into account. Are they highly qualified? What are their credentials and experience? What is their rate? What are they offering as part of their service? Final question -> Should I hire an online or in-person tutor? This is something we have to consider in today’s world. I’m here to help you make the right decision. It boils down to your child’s personality, how much you can afford, and what kind of service you expect from the tutor. Here are the pros and cons of each method to help you decide what is best for you. Online Tutor Pros:
Pros:
Happy Searching! Besides the usual excitement I get from students when they show up for a lesson (not really…lol), probably the most common reaction they have when faced with concepts in math that don’t make sense to them is a question like this, “When am I ever going to use this?” Initially, I used to respond with something like, “Well, there are some skills you are using here that can be useful someday, such as in finances.” It never really went beyond that, and I was truly not satisfied with the answer I gave them. Now, after 10 years of hearing this, I have a more brutally honest and direct response, “Well, probably never, but you still must graduate high school. If you do take a career path that uses a lot of math, like say, a math teacher, then you will use it. However, it is more likely that you won’t, but there are still a couple of gains here:
Yep, that’s pretty much it for most people! That being said, I want to focus on the practical application of math in personal finances. Specifically, in how we budget our money. Nowadays, many schools offer a class called “Financial Algebra.” I wish that I had a class like this growing up because it would have prepared me for the real world of credit cards, budgeting, and buying a car. These are areas of our lives that we can all relate to. Had I been more educated in the world of finances, I think that I would have made better decisions. When you go into the real world after high school, you will begin to make your own financial decisions independently. Here are a few tips that can get you started on the right path:
I am not a professional financial advisor, so please don’t take this information as such. However, I believe these are basics that will lead you in the right direction. There is so much more we can talk about for each of these points, but let’s save that for another day 😊 Not all learners are created equal, so how do you become the best tutor you can be with every student you work with? I believe it comes down to your mindset. Although you must adapt to each student’s learning style, there is a universal approach you can take when working with them. If you have children of your own, then this analogy will make sense. You see, as a parent, we want the best for our kids, so we will do pretty much anything to support them. If you, as a tutor, can look at each of your students as if they were your own child, then your dedication to help them succeed gets much easier. I don't know what it is, but this seems to put you, the tutor, in a more motivated, results-oriented mindset.
Don’t have any children? Perhaps a pet? The point is that you will take more dedicated care of the people you love. I’m not saying you must love your students but seeing them as your own can create impactful changes in the way you tutor. Try experimenting with this psychology on yourself the next time you work with one of your clients. Do it for a while and notice what happens. It is my belief that you will see positive results. Here are some other quick tips on how you can become a master tutor:
There are many other tips I could give, but these are guidelines that I have used repeatedly and successfully. My hope is that they can also help you become a better educator. Maybe you’ll find something else that works for you and that’s great! As long as your student is progressing, that is all that matters. Happy Tutoring! |
AuthorRossina here welcoming you to my blog :) Have you ever met someone who actually loves mathematics? Probably not, but that's me! I have been teaching math for 10+ years in a private one-on-one setting, helping families and students all over the country achieve mathematical mastery. Here, I share tips, insight, and provide resources to help you become a math master or tutor. I truly hope you find my blog helpful. Enjoy! Archives
September 2023
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