Guidelines to be a Good Tutor

It is essential to ensure that every child ifs given the necessary support regardess his/her social background in terms of education and other co-curricular activities. It is here that one to one private tuition becomes significant. It delivers additional support to the pupils who are not able to achieve their potential with classroom teaching. This is because the level of support required varies from child to child. Some needs to be coached in smaller groups or individually to make the progress needed to achieve their full potential. Here are some tips for tutors about delivering the support to such children:

First and foremost learn the art of motivating the child. To this closely study the child?s strengths and preferences. Try to find out if the child is getting enough scope to use them. Also see if there are confidence and self assurance in the pupil. Even if he is interested and has certain talents in sports, music or drama, encourage him participate in those. This will bring the confidence in him which will help him to pay attention to academic tasks too.

Don?t punish a pupil for poor grades. This will diminish the confidence and usher fear towards the subject. Keep high but reasonable expectations. Try to know his problems. For instance, if he does not do his homework, find out if they are too difficult for him; or if he is having problem about getting started. Help him out. The main hurdles to success are depression, family problems, negative peer influence, or a learning disability. Try to figure out if the pupil has any of the above. If so, take the required action.

Make the homework environment appealing to him. You can do so by helping him to have a clean and organized work space with pencils, erasers, paper and other materials. Encourage him to work as independently, as possible. But be there to help if needed.

Try to make study time interesting and packed with fun. Devise Games like word searches, to help study words and meanings. You can think of other unique games that will both teach the subject and remove boredom of learning.

Always praise and reward the pupil for small achievements. Don?t scold for goof ups. Ask him about how to fix the mistake. This will make him realize that there is no fear of failure. Read to him for pleasure. This will boost the skills of reading, writing, spelling and speaking and will also improve general knowledge.

Help him to connect between school and everyday life and also career goals. You can relate the day to day estimate of groceries and gas mileage to calculations he is learning in Math. This will make him understand the significance of Math. Talk to him about the elections and connect it to civics and social studies. As a tutor, you can talk about several interesting things about day to day life and associate them to studies. This will help him take the academic responsibilities more easily. To be a good tutor maintain a positive attitude and a sense of humor.

English Listening Comprehension Activity

An ESL teacher always needs to get his students speaking and listening to English. As we all know, our students many times don’t hear English outside of class. Many immigrants work and live with people who don’t speak English. Classroom activities that challenge a student’s listening and speaking skills are essential. You need to find activities that are fun and not intimidating so even the shy and reserved students will get on board. Try the following activity to get your students interacting and practicing English with one another.

At the end of a unit or chapter think of the major vocabulary words and grammar concepts that you want your class to practice. On a piece of paper draw nine line horizontally so you have ten equal sections to use. Write out ten sentences, one for each section, that include target vocabulary and grammar. Every sentence should cover a different set of words and grammatical concept. Cut out each sentence so you have ten slips of paper. Each slip of paper will have a unique sentence on it. Have your students sit in rows of five to six people back. You can decide how many rows there are going to be and how many students in each row by looking at your class numbers. This activity will work with large and small classes.

Now, explain to the class that the first person in every row will be getting a slip of paper that contains a sentence in English on it. This person’s job is to read the sentence and turn the paper face down. He now turns around and whispers the sentence to the student behind him. This student listens and immediately turns to the next student and does the same thing. Once the last student has heard the sentence, he is to say it out loud to the rest of the row and to you. As the teacher, you will tell him if he is correct or not. Many times the sentence that the last student recites is very different from the original. That is OK. Write the original sentence on the board so students can see what it was supposed to be. Go over the words that were mispronounced or omitted. Remind student that in the lesson you went over the grammar that the specific sentence includes.

If you have a larger class you will have to move around the room to attend to each group. When one row is done with a particular sentence, give it to another row. Let your students have fun and get carried away. Most people can’t help but laugh at themselves during this activity. Even though everyone is having fun, and most likely getting a little loud, there is important English practice occurring. Each student will concentrate extra hard on pronouncing their sentence correctly and listening to their classmate’s English. Many students will only produce English if they are forced to, and this is a fun way to require participation. I’ve always had fun with this and I bet you and your class will too.