Are you someone looking to improve your teaching and tutoring skills? Look no further! In this article, we're going to find out how you get started, find work and how you can provide the best support for your students during your lessons.
If we've already caught your attention, then keep reading to learn about how we can assist children and maybe even university students in their learning journeys and how you can incorporate your experience and expertise into your virtual classrooms.
We will cover how you can connect with your pupils and how to approach a casual chat about how you can both work together to collaboratively achieve their goals and improve their academic level.
Improving your academic level doesn't always happen overnight, so it is more than likely that you will work with the same pupils over a period of time. For this reason, it is important to learn how to make time to build a good rapport between yourself and your students.
This is especially important if you are considering online tutoring as opposed to face to face tutoring, for some it can feel difficult to achieve the same level of engagement without being in a physical classroom. With the ongoing effects of the Covid19 pandemic, online tutoring has seen a huge boom, so if you want to stand out among the crowd find out how you offer some of the highest quality online classes out there!
Here at Superprof, we've done the research, keep reading to find out how you can create engaging and supportive online environments and establish ongoing positive relationships with your online students.
We will draw on some concepts outlined by Cherie Mazer and her research on online tutoring. A Havard University Graduate, and someone who has a Doctorate in education, Cherie Mazer's techniques are sure to provide you with a basis of how you can plan and prep for your online classes.
Let's jump in and start learning! For more articles and guides about how to become an online tutor click here.
Online Tutoring Jobs: How to Assess your Student's Current Level
For some children it can be tricky to articulate what exactly they aren't quite understanding when it comes to certain subjects; whether it's Maths, English, History or Science. For others, they might also not quite get why they have to see a tutor outside of school if it is their parent's decision to start online tutoring lessons.
As we mentioned before in order to make meaningful progress and establish a good rapport, part of this journey is understanding your student's specific needs. For this reason, your first session could benefit from working together to discover what your student is currently capable of, and where they may need extra assistance in an academic setting.
You can think of this first session as a pre-assessment that'll provide you with the data you need to create lesson plans which are suitable. Pre-assessments could look like either;
- Select a brief test that covers some of the key areas curriculum criteria of the specific subject the student needs support for, such as English or Maths, this will allow you to discover what areas to focus on.
- A chat with your student about what kind of homework they are getting from school and what specifically they are studying in their face to face classroom.
Discovering what your student's current level is, and what kind of learner they are is also an integral part of creating productive session plans which will give your pupil the correct level of assistance they need.
Learn more about online tutoring by checking out another one of our articles here.
Tutor Online: Active Learning and Guided Coaching
The standard for supportive and productive tutoring is often coaching or guided learning. Let's find out why this method of tutoring is one of the most effective and popular teaching styles out there.
You may work with some students who have not had much assistance in terms of discovering how they can be independent and take control of their own education. This is where guided coaching can play a major role, as it provides pupils with the skills they need to critically think instead of just feeding them answers and concepts.
So, how can you as a budding online tutor promote active learning through guided coaching? We've provided you with a brief list of some of the ways tutors can help their students develop both collaboratively and independently;
- Try asking open-ended questions that don't always have a "yes or no" answer, this can encourage students to think creatively and outside of the box
- Explain information and concepts in a way that isn't full of jargon and is accessible for your students, especially if they have struggled to understand something the first time round
- Through your pre-assessments, you should have a good idea of how your student approaches learning and what kind of additional questions you can ask to help guide them towards the answers they need
- Break down the learning into a step by step process, this could look like learning resources such as an essay template for English or which order you need to solve an algebra problem in Maths
- Your student isn't going to learn everything in one lesson, so don't overload your students with too much information during your online classes
With a guided coaching approach to tutoring, you'll be able to assist your students in their ability to recall and revise the information, and how they can use step by step methods to break down their learning into bite-sized pieces.
Your pupils will be able to take these learning techniques into more than just one subject, remind them when they begin to feel stuck on a certain question about how they were able to reach the answer the last time and encourage them to utilise their prior knowledge.
Instructional Teaching: How to Explain Concepts as an Online Tutor
Not all children are able to learn best through guided coaching, everyone is different! Another method of teaching you can use in your tuition is instructional explanations. Similar to the step by step process, this is a more structured way of outlining how your student can approach their understanding and academic skills.
For example if you were teaching one of your pupils how to write a creative story or persuasive essay, for either high school or primary school English, you would break down the process of writing into different sections. This could look like for a creative story:
- Beginning: set the scene, introduce characters
- Middle: rise of conflict in the narrative, how does it get solved?
- End: conflict resolution, tying up of loose ends
Similarly for other subjects such as Maths or Science you would go over the steps needed to solve an equation or write up a hypothesis. Working with children can be challenging, so try and focus on small wins for each lesson.
For example, you could just focus on the tasks required for the first step of an equation or the introduction to an
By breaking down information and knowledge in a way that allows you to show your student how to understand certain concepts. For some children in particular, it can be beneficial to have a set of instructions laid out for them to follow so they can feel like they know which direction they need to be working towards.
This is still a method that allows kids to be active learners, think of instructional explanations as a means to give children a toolbox of skills that can help across many different subject areas.
We've only briefly covered some of Cherie Mezer's techniques today, so if any of these sound helpful to you make sure to check out some of her other research to get a more in-depth understanding of how to use these techniques.
To finish up this article it's important to remember that as an online tutor it is part of your responsibility to do some learning yourself too! It can be fun discovering all of the different ways you can help students learn to the best of their potential, it is also an incredibly rewarding vocation.
Learn more by checking out some of our other articles here at Superprof.
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