10 Strategies Home Tutors can Adapt to Teach Students Effectively

Just as much as education has evolved, home tutors have had to change their teaching strategies as well in order to roll with the punches. It’s no mean feat to land a home-based tuition job, and on top of that, it is challenging to tutor all kinds of students in this day and age.

Here are 10 Strategies Home Tutors can Follow to Teach Effectively

NO.1: EDUCATIONAL GAMES

Studying and learning about new topics and concepts is always confusing and difficult for many students. Home tutors, however, have the power to make this process more interesting and enjoyable for students by using games in their lessons.

Tutors can either use educational games or use quizzes like Kahoot to help make learning new concepts more fun. This method can also be used to test students. Having games as assessments will encourage students to study and look forward to them.

NO.2: STORIES AND MNEMONICS

Learning something new and complex is never easy. In school, this is made even more painful when teachers simply display paragraphs of content expecting students to understand them. This method is not only confusing for students, it also makes learning very monotonous and boring.

Source: Features of Horner's Syndrome

Home tutors however should avoid making this mistake and put in the effort by adding humour and interesting stories into the lesson. Fun mnemonics would be a great way to simplify content to study easily and recall easily during the examination.

Using these will both make the lessons unique and help students remember the concepts easier as they will have a fun story or joke attached to it.

NO.3: OUTSIDE OF ACADEMICS

Every student has their own hobbies and interests outside of academics which they are passionate about. Usually, school teachers do not have the time to care about the personal interests of all of their students.

Home tutors, however, have the privilege to do so and help strengthen their relationship with their students. Tutors can try to be creative by planning activities and lessons related to their students' hobbies or passions so as to make studying as fun as possible for them.

NO.4: PRESENTATION

Many students have felt the pain of achieving the correct answer but still be marked wrong for poor presentation or using methods that are not allowed. The expectations that schools have inevitably ended up suppressing the creativity that many students want to express.

Source: bbc.com

Home tutors need to provide their students with a platform to pour their creativity out. All they have to do is to allow students to use their creative methods to complete their tuition work. If they want to draw or if they want to create a website, tutors should allow them to do so.

However, tutors still need to emphasise that their presentation and methods during their school assessments must still meet school standards.

NO.5: COMMUNICATION

Tuition does not only require a relationship between the tutor and the student. It also requires tutors to communicate well with the parents of the students they are teaching.

Tutors only get to see students a few hours in a week and it is impossible to understand them fully in this limited time period. Thus, tutors can only know more about their students' study habits and discipline through their parents.

This can help tutors identify what is going right and what is going wrong and change their methods accordingly.

NO.6: STRENGHTS AND WEAKNESSES

Tutors need to understand their students’ strengths and weaknesses both in general and in specific topics. Students will only be able to improve if they correct their weaknesses and develop their strengths and it is difficult for students to do this by themselves. Tutors must ensure that their teaching style guides their students to achieve this.

NO.7: DRAWING A BOUNDARY

Without a formal tone, students may not show the level of respect that they need to give to their tutors. This will end up greatly reducing the effectiveness of teaching as students may not take lessons and instructions seriously. Thus, tutors need to be careful in drawing the line which students should not cross.

NO.8: PATIENCE

Everyone makes mistakes. No matter how educated or experienced someone is, they are bound to make mistakes. Thus, when students make honest mistakes, tutors need to be understanding.

Source: wayneelsey.com

Getting frustrated at a student because he or she does not understand something properly will only hurt their self-confidence. Tutors must always remain calm and explain their mistakes in a collected manner.

However, tutors must also become sterner when the mistakes have been occurring repeatedly or can be avoided easily. Without this sternness, students may also not understand the gravity of their mistakes.

NO.9: CARE AND CONCERN

Tutors need to show interest in their students’ learning and make sure that the students know that they care about them. Many tutors just tap away on their phones during lessons which can end up causing students to lose interest in the lessons.

Source: edsurge.com

If tutors themselves do not seem to show interest during the lessons, students will also lose interest in them. This includes times outside of lesson. When a student has an examination, graded assessment or even any important event non-academic related, tutors should ask them how it went.

This simple gesture can go a long way.

No.10: FEEDBACK

No matter how knowledgeable it is impossible to perfectly judge how a lesson went. The success of a lesson depends on both tutors and students and many tutors may be inaccurate in their judgment of how the student feels.

Tutors should not be afraid to ask for feedback from their students. Sometimes, students may have more creative and effective ideas for the tutor to learn from. If tutors are too embarrassed or uncomfortable to ask their students directly, they can also get feedback from their parents.