Although parents don’t sit through tutoring, they should know what to expect in a math tutoring session to ensure their child’s needs are met.
Your child may not have needed a tutor before, so you might not know what to look for in a tutor or what to expect in a tutoring session. I want you to choose a math tutor knowing what to expect from each tutoring session, and questions to ask potential tutors.
Your Child Deserves the Best
You might see your child’s math grade decline. Or incomplete homework assignments for the first time. Or you saw other indicators after reading my post, “Is your child ready for a tutor?” You decide your child is ready for a tutor. And you want to find the best tutor.
You can differentiate tutors by their education and experience, but wouldn’t it also be helpful to know what a typical tutoring session looks like before choosing the best tutor for your child?
How do they plan for tutoring sessions? Are they able to explain concepts in different ways? How do they build your child’s confidence in both themselves and their math abilities?
Here’s a sneak peak into what I do.
How do you plan for each math tutoring session?
My plan for each session is aligned with the student's goals. This may include homework help, a review before unit tests, and/or standardized test prep.
We start sessions out by answering any questions students have, and reteaching concepts that are unclear. We explain concepts simply and in multiple ways to ensure understanding. Then we build confidence by practicing the skills in their assignment problems or our past assignment/test questions. Next, we apply the concepts to challenging questions like word problems. Finally, we mix in review problems from earlier concepts in the chapter to prepare for upcoming tests.
From teaching high school math, I learned the importance of teaching concepts in multiple ways to ensure students with different learning styles understand. Therefore, I teach each concept looking at graphs, tables, equations, and words.
Words? In a math class? Yes! Students describe the problem-solving process and identify when to use certain processes. Common Core stresses the justification of math processes, understanding why procedures are used and what the answer means. Gone are the days of solving math problems over and over to only know the procedure and answer.
Another key element to tutoring lessons is continuously cycling back to review older content. Math builds on itself so it’s important to have a solid foundation.
Planning is different for students who are “caught up,” on track with their current math course and understanding most topics, versus “falling behind,” struggling to maintain the pace of learning and/or having trouble understanding concepts.
A typical 60-minute AP Calculus tutoring session would include:
· 5 minute review of content from previous sessions
· 15 minute practice of AP questions (for other subjects, this would be solving more challenging review problems)
· 35 minutes of focused instruction, homework help, or test prep
· 5 minute reflection or summary of problem solving techniques
For a student who is falling behind and needs to drastically improve their grade, I would skip the 15 minutes of AP questions for now, using the time for extra focused instruction. Once the student is caught up and demonstrates mastery of the Calculus concepts, then I would introduce AP questions into the lessons.
An advanced student may only need 15 minutes of homework help so I would dedicate the extra time to instruction on topics they will cover next. Having a preview of new content makes the content easier to understand when they learn it a second time in class.
What does an online tutoring session look like?
The same outline is followed for face-to-face and online lessons. See examples of this in the sample lesson videos (beginning of session, middle of session, and end of session). A bonus of online lessons is sending video recordings like these to students so they can re-watch the lesson!
Tutoring sessions with other tutors will be different so I recommend reading tips for finding the best tutor, which includes questions to ask potential tutors. You could also create questions for the tutor from Carlton College's outline for tutoring sessions.
Still not sure we'd be the best fit for your child? We offer a free 15 minute consultation to discuss your child's educational needs. Then, the first session is paid by itself to make sure it's a good fit.
Fill out our New Student Form, and we can set up the consultation or first session!