Let’s say you’re in a session with a student who’s visibly stuck and frustrated by a lack of progress. You’ve just asked some guiding questions, but with no success.
What’s a tutor to do now??
We know how tricky this scenario can be, given our dedication to student involvement.
While it’s definitely bad for a student to get so much help that they fail to learn, it’s just as bad and often worse for the learning process when they get so little help that they give up completely.
Instead of asking more guiding questions that the student may just guess on or not answer, here’s an initial list of tips for inspiration. Future posts in this series will expand on tactics like these.
- Walk the student through increasingly simple, targeted examples.
- Provide encouraging, motivating, and supportive language.
- Give increasingly specific hints about what the next step requires the student to use, find, or do.
- Assure the student that they’ll get to the answer AND feel comfortable with this material in the future if they bear with you for a while longer.
- Further break down explanations you’ve given earlier in the session, focusing on what the student is having the most trouble with.
- Do a small part of the work for the student, then have the student take over.
- Discover more of what the student DOES understand and build on top of it.
What other tactics have helped you in these situations? Please discuss and tell us what you think in the comments section below!
-Team Yup
