Tutoring: How To Run A Lesson
So, you’ve recently started advertising your services as a tutor and have just gotten a message from your first potential client looking to book in a lesson next week. Firstly, congratulations! Getting your first student is a huge achievement and we know, as tutors, what an amazing feeling it is.
Of course, to keep this student coming back, you want to impress them from the get-go. To help you knock it out of the park, we’ve put together this helpful guide to refer back to when planning that all-important first class.
Step 0: Introductory Phone Call
This is by no means essential, but we would highly recommend that before even booking in the first lesson you offer a free, 15-minute phone call with the student as well as their parent(s) if they are under 18. Not only is this a great opportunity to sell yourself and provide the client with some general information about the lessons, but it is also a chance for you to learn some helpful information about the student that you can then use to plan the perfect first lesson. Some things we would recommend asking during the call after introducing yourself are:
• Can I confirm what school year you are in?
• Do you know what exam board you will be sitting? (Helpful to have a list of common ones for the area)
• What are your predicted grades for (subject)?
• Will you be doing the higher or foundation paper? (If applicable to subject)
• How are you finding (subject) in general? Do you enjoy it?
• Are there any topics within (subject) that you think would be worth working on?
• What are you hoping to gain from these lessons?
• How are you finding school overall?
• Do you have any questions you would like to ask me about myself or the lessons?
With the information you gather, you can start planning for your first lesson and answer any outstanding questions the client may have. Taking this time to call them can boost their opinion of you and therefore create an ideal opportunity at the end to segway into booking in the first lesson.
Like we said, it isn’t by any means essential, but even as experienced tutors we think it’s still a great thing to do with every single new student.
Step 1: Preparing the lesson
Regardless of whether you do a phone call or not, the next logical step would be to make a lesson plan. This doesn’t need to take hours; we would recommend spending no more than 10 minutes making one. When planning the first lesson, there are only two things you really need to do:
1. Make a rough outline of what topics you hope to cover in the lesson. Hopefully, the student can give you some direction as to where they think their weaknesses are and you can tailor the lesson around these areas. If they have no suggestions though, working through an exam paper during the first lesson is a great way to identify where their pitfalls are.
2. Download any resources needed for the lesson. If you plan to do an exam paper then download the exam paper onto your device. If you plan to study a poem in English literature, then copy and paste that poem onto your virtual whiteboard. If you plan to do trigonometry in maths, then take some screenshots of practice questions and upload them to the workspace. Like we said, first impression count, so coming to these lessons with your resource’s ready shows good preparation and planning skills.
Step 2: Keep a digital/physical record of your students
It all comes back to preparation, and we promise you that as soon as you have a handful of students, you will start mixing up which topics you’ve done with which students. Therefore, it can be handy to keep either a digital or physical document for every student with some basic information about the student (first name, year group, exam board, predicted grades) as well as a lesson record. It doesn’t have to be complicated, for each lesson we would simply recommend you make a note of:
• Topics covered.
• Subjective assessment of how you think the student did, for example attitude, engagement and understanding.
• Was any homework due for this lesson? Did they do it and what score did they get?
• Was any homework set for the following lesson?
• Do they have any nominated topics to go through next lesson? If not, what do you think would be worth looking into?
Not only do these help you keep track of who is doing what, but they also serve as a lesson plan in themselves and can easily be filled in whilst in the lesson is in progress. All that means you need to do outside the lesson is find the resources.
Step 3: Start of each lesson
To start each lesson, its always good to have a quick chat with the student about how they are doing, what they’ve been up to since you last saw each other and what they have been covering in school that week. Tutoring isn’t just about the content, but also building a good working relationship with the student. A good tip is to make a note if your student has any exciting upcoming plans and then, during the next lesson, ask them about how they were, adding a nice personal touch.
It’s always good to give students a sense of choice within the lessons, especially with the younger ones who are typically made to attend them. We find the best thing to ask at the start is:
“Do you have any homework or topics you’ve done in school that you would like us to go through today, or should we continue with the lesson plan?”
Asking this as a binary question makes it a much easier decision for the student where they either pick Option A or B, as a pose to an open question such as “what do you want to do today?”. Most of the time they won’t have an answer to broad questions like these. Additionally, it does give them that opportunity to bring up something they’ve been finding difficult in class.
Step 4: During the lesson
After a brief chat in the beginning, you should at least have a mental plan of what you want to achieve during the remaining lesson time, whether that be homework, a topic suggested by the student or one that was already on your lesson plan . No matter how well you plan though, lessons are unpredictable and therefore you need to be flexible with your schedule. Sometimes, a student will find a seemingly easy topic very challenging, and you’ll need to take some time to go through that with them before moving on. Regardless of how the lesson flows, be patient and remember you are aiming for improvement, not to check of a certain number of topics covered. Students will feel much better if you take time to explain things thoroughly and give them the opportunity to practice as a pose to rush through a million questions.
Step 5: The end is in sight
The end of the lesson is usually pretty easy and is a good chance to summarise to the student what you have covered, give them some feedback on what they did well and what they need to work on, set any homework (if that’s something you like to do) and, if time allows it, you can even set them a quick summary quiz to test their understanding of the classes content. This quiz doesn’t need to be longer than 5 minutes and can give you as the tutor useful feedback on what you need to work on next time.
Finally, for most students, it will be their parents who are the driving force behind the lessons…and the ones financing it. This means parents often like to be kept in the loop and appreciate when ,as a tutor you, are proactive and reach out to them with a short progress report. An update can be as simple as a message to say their child did well with (insert topic) today, that they handed in a really good piece of homework or that they put in a lot of effort. Providing the odd bit of positive feedback often make parents much more responsive if you have any constructive criticism to give, and a mix of the two is usually the best way to get the message across. Again though, be specific, else these messages can sound ingenuine.
Instead of:
“Sam did really well in his lesson today”
Say:
“Sam did a great job today. He handed in his homework that I had set on Pythagoras and got 80% which is a new record for him. He’s been working hard the last few lessons and I think this result shows it’s really paying off. His trigonometry skills are still a little behind, but that will be the focus of next week’s lesson!”.
Yes, it takes a little longer to write but it will certainly be more memorable for the parent.
In conclusion
The first lesson can always be stressful for a tutor, but we promise you that as you continue, they get a lot easier as you become familiar with the student (and their parents). Just remember, planning is essential, but progress is ultimately measured by improvement.