What do the best tutors do?

Private tutoring is all about building a friendly, engaging and open relationship!

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Be a great listener

• Be an active listener.
• At the start of the lesson, get the student to do a brief recap of what you covered last week.
• Ask the student if they have any questions from class that week which they would like to go over.
• If appropriate, ask the student to re-explain topics you learnt 15-30 minutes earlier in the lesson.

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Be cool, calm and collected

• Speak slowly and clearly.
• Be patient and understanding.
• Don’t talk too much (they won’t remember much at all if you are just talking to them all lesson)!
• Always be confident and make lessons fun!

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Be an explorer

• Ask them for any questions from class that week which they would like to go over.
• Ask them if there’s any specific topic they want to cover this lesson.
• When summarising a concept and/or doing a practice question, ask if they understand your explanation.
• If the student says they understand your explanation, get the student to elaborate/do another similar question on it (otherwise you don’t know if they actually understand it).

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Be a navigator

• Personalise every lesson to the student’s upcoming assessment task and knowledge gaps.
• Mix up your teaching strategies (past paper questions, oral responses, mind maps, syllabus terminology tests, videos, real world examples, graphs, get them to summarise what you have said in their own words, ask them follow up questions, etc).

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Be supportive

• Provide regular feedback on their process.
• Encourage students regularly.

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