Teaching Strategies For Effective Student Learning

Becoming a tutor may not be as easy as you think. You are mistaken if you believe this profession only demands the necessary qualifications, standard teaching knowledge, and relevant skills. There is more to it. It would help if you shook things up differently according to every student's needs and preferences so that you can advance their constructive learning.

Confused about how to make that happen? Well, luckily, you have landed on the right page, as this blog is about to share some incredible tips on how tutors can effectively advance student learning. Continue reading this blog to get your hands on some valuable tutoring tips to ensure exceptional student learning:

Effective Teaching Tips Tutors Can Use to Teach Students

Tutoring refers to the idea of going beyond the standard classroom teaching approach. It not only involves imparting knowledge but also moral values to the students. This practice starts by teaching a skill or subject to every student individually. It involves molding the teaching method and style according to every learner's needs.

Here are some effective tutoring tips which you can use to ensure productive learning:

Always Start by Getting to Know your Student

The first step towards effective tutoring is to know your student thoroughly. You should remember that tutoring is not about delivering a generalized lecture to many students in a classroom. On the contrary, it's about educating and guiding an individual by picking a teaching scheme in which they are most comfortable. This will help you tutor them efficiently as your teaching method will precisely meet your student's needs and preferences.

Some ways to get to know your students are:

• Introducing yourself
• Asking your student to introduce themselves
• Inquire the student about their likes and dislikes when it comes to private learning so that you can create a teaching method that fits best for them
• Telling your students about how you are planning to teach and what will or will not be included in the lectures
• Asking them if they want to make any inquiries or requests regarding the tutoring service
• You can give the students a demo to assess their satisfaction with the teaching method

Pick a Fun Yet Effective Teaching Approach

When tutoring university students, a common mistake many tutors make is that they pick a long and boring lecturing method which makes the student lose interest, yawing their way out of the learning zone. In some cases, tutors keep rambling about the topic, while in other scenarios, they use dry academic language and approach to convey the subject's teachings. This makes the learning experience monotonous and dry as dust.

As a result, it is necessary to pick a teaching style that sparks exceptional interest in the student, engaging them to learn more and more about the subject. Here are a few ways to spice up your tutoring approach:

• Deliver the lecture in the form of a fun and thrilling story
• Build your lecture around the question rather than the answer
• Add the Q&A part to your lecture
• Try talking about other things instead of sticking to the course the entire time
• Keep the lectures short and interesting
• Use multimedia to capture the interest of the students

Use the Think-Pair-Share Model

A major issue in the teaching industry is that many educators believe the students have no knowledge base. However, this is not true.

Thankfully, people recognize the importance of cooperative learning, where pupils are given room to think. This is where the think-pair-share model kicks in. This is a different and healthy learning activity where tutors give each student a piece of information or a video to watch. This is followed by asking them questions regarding the information, requesting the students to reflect on it, and writing down their answers. Afterward, the students are paired with a peer to discuss their responses and develop a reasonable single answer together. This will result in one answer from each pair, resulting in a group discussion or debate.

The think-pair-share model is an exceptional way tutors can establish critical thinking, problem-solving techniques, and teamwork skills.

Use Technological Innovation

The excellent innovation of technology has made it easy to dazzle the learning experience. You can advance student learning by using the web with stacks of information and material that can be used to teach and test your students efficiently. You can use pictures, videos, animations, and other multimedia tools to convey and explain your message thoroughly. Not only will the students efficiently learn the subject or skill, but they will also enjoy the smart and innovative learning method.

Moreover, the internet has enabled tutors to effectively structure their lessons by offering connectivity  no matter how far you are from your student. You can always organize online classes, give and check homework through email or use the message option to answer any questions then and there.

Start Regular Testing

The idea of tutoring is not only about delivering heaps of information every day to your student. It is also about regularly testing your students. Therefore, it is necessary to take summative and formative assessments to assess how well your student is learning. This will give you an idea of whether your teaching approach is adequately working on the student or needs a change to make it more effective.

Use Games to Assess the Student's Comprehension

If you want your students to build interest in your sessions, it is a great idea to take the help of games. Online games help you assess the student's comprehension, perspective, brain power, and many other aspects of their educational and personality development. This will give you an idea of how well your student performs and make the learning experience fun and exciting.

Incorporate Humor in your Tutoring

Talking about studies all the time may dry things up a little. Why not use a little humor to lighten the mood? Tutors should create a balanced educational environment for their students, so they do not burn out. They should use humor to keep the students engaged and interested in studying with you. A failure to do so may make the learning experience dry, boring, and toxic due to continuous discussions around a single topic.

Change Tutoring Settings

Are you wondering why your lessons are ineffective, despite following all the necessary strategies to deliver lessons effectively? The answer might be simple. Students get bored and reluctant to learn if they are taught in the same location or environment for a long time. As a result, you should change your tutoring location, theme, setting, or environment to shake things up a little.

Be Flexible

Flexibility is a defining trait of an effective tutor. Understand that every student is unique. They have different likes, dislikes, and preferences. You should have a generalized teaching approach to become a successful tutor. It is necessary to understand each student's psyche, behavior and needs so that you can mold your teaching styles accordingly.

Ask for Feedback

The key to becoming a successful tutor is always having room for improvement. This can be done by asking for feedback from your students so that you know which areas you should work on yourself. Additionally, it would be best to positively take constructive criticism to fix the gray areas.

Organize Q&As

A great way of ensuring your students are efficiently learning is organizing regular Q&A sessions. You can ask them questions to assess their performance. If they can answer the majority of questions, then their learning process is going great, and it should be maintained similarly. However, if they cannot answer the majority of questions, then their learning process needs modification. Moreover, it will help you in effectively tutoring students who are usually hesitant to clear their doubts by encouraging them to ask questions to resolve their confusion, queries, and concerns.

Alt-Title: A tutor ready to take questions from students.

Meta-Description: Tutors should encourage students to ask questions from them to clarify any confusion and answer all concerns.

Encourage Creativity

No matter what subject you are teaching or your student's age, encouraging creativity is one of the essential aspects of tutoring. You should motivate your students to become more creative to fuel the learning process and make educating yourself more effective. You can do so by incorporating creative methods of teaching like:

• Brainstorming ideas
• Storytelling during lectures
• Map making during discussions
• Assumption-busting activities
• Teaching through smart boards
• Using multimedia tools

Let your Students Make Mistakes

'A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.'

You should apply this saying to your teaching methods. Do not scold or discourage your students from making mistakes during learning, as this will demotivate them. Moreover, it can also make them hesitant to answer or come up with conclusions. Therefore, it is necessary to let them make mistakes as this will allow them to learn from their mistakes efficiently.

Encourage Independence

The best tutor is the one who teaches their students everything from scratch to an advanced level but also gives them space after teaching the foundations of every subject. This encourages independence as students are urged to use their critical thinking abilities to develop viable learning methods and decisions. The idea of spoon-feeding students all the time can excessively wreck their personal and professional life as they will always remain dependent on someone for their decisions. As a result, after teaching the basics, you should take a step back and observe from a distance with little help to ensure that students have the know-how of self-learning.

Use the Drill Method

The drilling method is excellent for teaching students topics requiring high memory work. For instance, topics like the periodic table of elements, verb conjugation, and multiplication tables are some examples that require the drilling technique to make students memorize them by heart. The drill methods refer to making students consistently repeat after you so that they thoroughly memorize the relevant content.

Stay Patient and Positive

An essential of conducting a practical first lesson as a tutor is patience and positivity. It would be best if you always remembered that every student is different. Not every student will give exceptional results from day one. You must invest excessive time, effort, and individual attention in them to get the desired result. Therefore, it is necessary to never lash out at the student if they underperform. Instead, it would help if you motivated them never to give up and keep practicing consistently.

Understanding the Responsibilities of Tutoring

Becoming a tutor may be exciting, but you should remember that this profession comes with many responsibilities. It is no doubt that you need to make excessive efforts and come up with several different teaching strategies to advance the constructive learning of your students. Moreover, you should know that your student will look up to you not only as a teacher but also as a mentor. Therefore, it is essential always to understand your student, help them learn the desired subject or skill, and aid them in becoming the best version of themselves personally and professionally.