Tutoring the Young

[Killean]

I have recently accepted a glorious position as the tutor of my friends sister. She is a fidgety girl in grade 5, and so I thought before I dive too fast that I should ask for some advice. So teachers, mothers, previously fidgety and a girl, lend me your ears and thoughts for a few moments.

First and foremost, I will explain the situation a little. Her parents need a little break, and the fact that they have been away from the scholastic world for a while doesn't help much either. Being considered fairly intelligent and far less removed from english and mathematics, they asked if I could help maybe a few days a week. I couldn't think of any greater honor, as I've known her since she was a babe and I want to see her succeed in life.

The second part is this is my first time instructing someone (more then just giving simple answers or fixes etc...), and to be honest I am a little intimidated. I do not wish to use any kind of raised voice to demand quiet or attention. I also believe in giving rewards for jobs well done (a little poor to be buying candy or the like all the time), but without patronizing her.

 

So I guess my first question is, how should I handle her youthful exuberance (dancing, fidgeting, fooling around) when the situation should call for attention and temperance?

 

Next, does anyone have some tips, games, fun activities (English and Math) that I can try?

 

How should I handle discipline? I know there is need for it in rare occasions.

 

How should I handle the opposite, rewards?

[TheBigDog]

Here is my advice for tutoring kids, and it works for me because of my personality. Other techniques may work better for you.

 

I have one kid who is a in fourth grade, and two others who have passed through the age you are talking about. My experience is gained from trial and error (mostly error) in helping these guys with their school work on all topics.

 

The best trick is to treat it as something you are both learning. Take turns explaining to each other. Make discovery of the answers a cool and exciting thing. When there is reading involved we take turns reading out load. When I am done with my turn I will say something like, "what was that first part?" like I don't remember and I need help. That forces the kid to pay attention to me, and also boosts their confidence because they don't feel like I always know everything and they know nothing.

 

The more fun you both have with it the better off you will be. If you feel like the totoring is becoming a drudgery, change pase, be creative, but keep fun in the process.

 

Good luck!

 

Bill

[InfiniteNow]

Have fun, place yourself in their shoes, and remember that they're not being difficult by not getting it. :)

[cwes99_03]

You have to be a teacher first. I tutored a high school girl with ADD.

 

She was a handful, and she always wanted me to be her friend first, so if she didn't feel like it she didn't have to do things.

 

I'll have more for you monday.

[cwes99_03]

Now, I realized later that what I wrote may be confusing.

 

I don't mean that you have to be a certified experienced teacher before you tutor. I meant that you need to make every attempt to be a teacher in the situation, not necessarily a friend. Of course, you'll have to find a balance of your own.

 

My experience was tutoring a teenage girl while I was a junior in college. Of course, junior year is quite busy especially as a physics major. They were looking for help in algebra and geometry, but she was taking a physics class as well. Not really sure why because she was struggling and repeatedly told me she wasn't all that interested in either subject (math or physics). My guess is that her parents told her to do so.

 

I ended up spending almost as much time trying to get her to focus on her school work as I did working on their home computer which was loaded down with spyware and what not. The important part of the story is that her grades did improve.

 

My recommendations.

1) Never help them do a problem they have not attempted. Also never let them attempt something that they aren't really trying. Go over a couple of problems for which the answer is already provided (usually odds in many textbooks, check the back.) My student wanted to skip past those (because she already had the answers) all the time.

2) Once they have completed a few problems review them and see how the student did. Show them mistakes they have made and help them to correct them, then move on. Don't sit there and help them do every problem, they won't learn anything if you do it all for them.

3) Ask to see their grades.

4) Try to tutor in a neutral location. I was over at their house at the computer desk. Thus she was always wanting to mess with the computer, and constantly distracted by her family members. The school is the best place to do so, for other reasons as well (students tend to do better when they take the test in the same place that they did the learning.)

5) Don't ever say it is easy. You will think it numerous times. Also don't tell them that they should already know how to do it, they will forget and do so often. You will likely have to review points every session. This is especially important when today's lesson builds off of the previous lesson.

6) Never move on to the next lesson if the previous lesson was incomplete. This may get you backlogged, but if they are unwilling to complete assignments, then they are really unwilling to learn, just trying to get their grades up. Their grades would improve if you just did their homework for them, but that isn't the point now is it.

 

That's what I can think of right now.

[CraigD]

My main source of income in college was tutoring college students. I later taught on the faculty of the same college at which I’d tutored for 4 years, 3 academic and 1 summer semester. I then guided 2 of my children from kindergarten through 12th grade. I don’t actually have any experience in a non-parent child tutoring role – but, of course, that doesn’t stop me from having opinions and advice.

 

Several previous posters have given sound, thoughtful advice, so I’ll add just my personal take on the most important thing about tutoring, and observation of my own unusual experience of being both a student, tutor, and teacher of the same classes.

 

The Most Important Thing About Tutoring, in my opinion, is providing your tutee (the term we used in the state-funded tutoring service for which I worked) with examples of sound study and problem solving skills. Even though, by the end of my tutoring days, I had helped tutees through nearly every imaginable problem several times over, I found it worked best to feign unfamiliarity with the material, starting any problem with “I don’t know – let’s see if we can figure out how to start”, and even intentionally follow false paths in order to show the importance of practical skills of trial and error. Each tutee had his or her own unique approach to problem solving, which I tried to discover and follow, rather than imposing my own.

 

The Next Most Important Thing About Tutoring (According To Craig) (I knew I couldn’t stop with The Most Important) is condensing everything about a course to what will fit on a 3x5” card. This is a not entirely conventional or uncontroversial opinion, and is best suited to Math and Science, but I continue to believe it works well for most people in most subjects.

 

A final thing I consider very important is to understand the distinction between a tutor and a teacher. A teacher’s role, despite contemporary rhetoric to the contrary, is somewhat adversarial – they present and explain the class material, but, ultimately, give and grade the tests that decide success vs. failure, excellence vs. mediocrity. A tutor’s roll is entirely allied – ultimately, the tutor is on the tutees side in helping them meet the challenges set by the teacher.

 

In terms of authority, the teacher has it, the tutor does not. Tutors must be careful in such situations not to provoke their tutees to confront the teacher with “my tutor says you’re wrong”, even when they obviously are, or to cause their tutees to adopt a disrespectful or argumentative attitude toward their teacher. Smug and superior is OK, but only if the tutee understanding of discretion enought not to offend the teacher – a skill my kids lacked as 5th graders.

 

Which brings to mind another Important Thing – and, in my experience, on of the hardest to adhere to: resist the impulse to teach tutees so many things unrelated to their classwork that they are confused or distracted.

[Killean]

The best trick is to treat it as something you are both learning. Take turns explaining to each other. Make discovery of the answers a cool and exciting thing.

Thanks Bill. That has to be one of the best pieces of advice I have heard. Only thing I need to keep in mind to make it work, is not to be impatient. Just need to remember that I'm there to help her, and taking all the time in the world to get through it is what's most important. So long as it remains fun to do. And if I remember correctly, visual or physical representations of problems involves them, therefore making a situation beyond just words on paper. a.k.a. Fun.

 

You have to be a teacher first. I tutored a high school girl with ADD.

I understood what you meant about being a teacher first. I spoke more about her situation with her mother this evening and learned quite a bit. She does have minor ADHD, with some kind of impaired thinking (she has major difficulties imagining word or number play in her mind). It's going to be difficult, of that I have no doubt. But as you said, a neutral ground would be best, along with one on one studying.

 

Besides trying to create interesting activities for us to do, I think I have come up with a little incentive/punishment system for helping her.

If she requires my help, or gets a question wrong, twice, then I will add an additional question on top.

If she gets a question right without my help, I will "help" her with 1 of the other questions.

If she gets all questions right without any help from me, I will see about springing for some kind of treat.

So in other words, she will either end up doing 1 1/2 her work, 1/2(+) her work, or 1 and get a treat.

 

Does this sound feasible?

 

So she has a science fair coming up in march. Preliminary work needs to be done for February 1st. I of course will be looking to you guys for some help on good things to try. So far after discussing things with her briefly, here are the area's she is currently interested in:

1) Calcium Decay from Safe Acids

2) Electrical Currents/Electromagnetism

3) Plant Chlorophyll Manipulation

 

3 I'm not so sure about. If I were to add coloring to the water supply for a flower, would that force a change of it's color?

[Killean]

Wow, Craig, awesome!

The Next Most Important Thing About Tutoring (According To Craig) (I knew I couldn’t stop with The Most Important) is condensing everything about a course to what will fit on a 3x5” card. This is a not entirely conventional or uncontroversial opinion, and is best suited to Math and Science, but I continue to believe it works well for most people in most subjects.

You see, I'm like this as well. Whenever I learn something new, I also like writing a small reference or tutorial on the subject. It helps immensely. This is one of the exercises I was going to do with her for her english. When I receive her weekly word list, I will select one at random (of course making sure it is fairly common), write it down for her to carry around, and have her mark down on it whenever she uses it during the day. Memory and visualization seem to be the big things I need to work on.

 

A final thing I consider very important is to understand the distinction between a tutor and a teacher.

...

In terms of authority, the teacher has it, the tutor does not. Tutors must be careful in such situations not to provoke their tutees to confront the teacher with “my tutor says you’re wrong”, even when they obviously are, or to cause their tutees to adopt a disrespectful or argumentative attitude toward their teacher.

This, along with trying to think a little more on the 11 year old side are things I need to remain conscious of... The former I need to watch out for the most because I sometimes do blurt out (even jokingly) the know-it-allism attitude. The latter, well, I can only try my best.

 

Which brings to mind another Important Thing – and, in my experience, on of the hardest to adhere to: resist the impulse to teach tutees so many things unrelated to their classwork that they are confused or distracted.

Dear god YES!! I'm bad for this. However I've been doing it for her all her life. She has a question, I just impulsively answer it to the best of my knowledge.

 

Wow. One can learn a lot of oneself when trying to teach another.

[Chacmool]

One thing I have found: it helps to let the student feel that he/she is achieving something extraordinary. This will vary greatly from person to person. For some, it is a marvellous achievement just to remember what a prime number is, and you must give praise accordingly. No one feels like learning if they feel stupid all the time.

[Qfwfq]

I agree fully with not making them feel stupid. I can remember a very lousy math teacher at high school, if I'd had a better one I would have had less difficulty in my university math exams.

 

However, never let them really think that you're the pupil. I agree with all said here about guiding them to approaches and stimulating them etc. but always let them notice that you don't really need to be taught and that usually you can get there even when they can't. They do need to see you as the guide that they can trust and often you might need them to trust what you say at face value, either for the moment or because it would be out of place to give them an exhaustive proof. You migh need to tell them that "Lots of folk have proven XYZ but it's a big thing to explain." or that archeologists have found a lot of proof of something...

[cwes99_03]

One thing I have found: it helps to let the student feel that he/she is achieving something extraordinary. This will vary greatly from person to person. For some, it is a marvellous achievement just to remember what a prime number is, and you must give praise accordingly. No one feels like learning if they feel stupid all the time.

 

Be careful here. Building up their self esteem with false encouragement when they aren't really accomplishing anything is detrimental to the learning process. Actually teaching them something, and letting them achieve a high score on the test is the best reward.

But you definitely don't want them to feel hopeless.

[Chacmool]

Be careful here. Building up their self esteem with false encouragement when they aren't really accomplishing anything is detrimental to the learning process. Actually teaching them something, and letting them achieve a high score on the test is the best reward.

But you definitely don't want them to feel hopeless.

You're right - encouragement has to be sincere and for real achievement. But for some students the progress has to be broken down into smaller units of achievement.

 

I was crushed by a teacher at school who once told me, in front of the whole class, that I was stupid and then ordered me to go sit in the front. ;)

[cwes99_03]

Yah, definitely avoid that. Stupid teachers.

[eric l]

 

I was crushed by a teacher at school who once told me, in front of the whole class, that I was stupid and then ordered me to go sit in the front. :D

 

That teacher himself obviously forgot that he (she ?) was even more in front !

[Qfwfq]

:confused: that would have been a bold one to answer with!

 

Anyway I really didn't think Chacmool meant false encouragement, overboosting their ego or anything of the sort! :hihi: ;) I fully agreed with her point, as long as they don't think the roles are switched around encouragement is fine.

[eric l]

Anyway, right now I'm more involved in teaching/tutoring senior citizens how to use computer and internet. The problems are very much the same : how to keep their attention, when to praise and when to scold - and surely avoiding to praise or scold the same person too often.

 

There is the same lack of self-confidence with most, and the unfounded selfconfidence with a few, which is just as bad. You have the same problems with lack of concentration - with senior citizens very often because they need only half a word to start telling annecdotes from their own experience.

 

I combine teaching and tutoring : teaching classes of 12 pupils with one lesson per week, taking 2 hours + coffee break. I rarely repeat things in class, but I'm available for tutoring and advise more than 12 hours per week during our "open workshops".

 

I also noticed that those who ask for tutoring are not exactly the weaker pupils.

[Sacri Sankt]

i was tutored at home on a couple of occassions (i had a rather eventful childhood) and the tutors i think helped me most were the ones who could tell me why something worked the way it did. its all well and good to teach someone we breath in o2 and exhale co2, but explaining why this happens (in terms the child can understand, of course) will make sure she never forgets the answer. hell, i still recall how krebs cycle works from when i was about 12.