Attitude and Approachability (4) – Sometimes when tutoring gen. bio. you can see the student’s frustration with “why is there so much material and most of it is really boring.” I’ve felt that way too about some of the material. So when tutoring I always try to strongly encourage the student to think positively about all of this and focus on things like learning how to study and master the large amount of material and also try to relate these things to everyday life. You can use examples of things that you read about in the news and show how gen. bio. stuff does relate and try to generate more interest in the material. Also, I feel like I keep a relaxed friendly attitude when tutoring and try to get the point across that I am just a student as well and that we can get through the difficult parts of the material together.
Active learning (3) – I try consistently ask and repeat questions that will help the student really understand the material. I encourage them to say it out loud and work through it so they have the confidence in themselves for the test. Sometimes I feel like I do over-explain and the student kinda goes “what did you say” I like to go over the details by re-reading them in the text and then discussing that along with the broad concept.
Verifies Knowledge (4) – I make sure that the student can critically think about the material and answer questions that lead to discussion of the material. Depending on how well the student knows the material I also quickly quiz them on topics that we talked about before or from the text in between different items on the agenda. Sometimes I feel like I ask too many open ended questions but I’ve realized that that’s not really a bad thing as long as it becomes clear and the students understands that topic.
Modeling (3) – This is something that I am doing more and more even if I really don’t need to look up a certain topic, I will go through with the student and use the index and other sources to make sure we have all the necessary details for that topic. I’ll say “let’s make sure we convered everything for (x) and make sure we’re not missing anything important” As we do this I encourage them to do the same when they read and study. Sometimes I forget to stress this but it’s definately something that is important to share with the students and encourage.
Processing, Scaffolding, and attendance are some of my weaknesses that I will focus on for next year to be a more complete tutor.
