Blue Tutors

Blue Tutors - How to Teach

At Blue Tutors we are committed to building relationships, and believe that referral is the only long term way to achieve success. To this end we are passionate about teaching, and continually strive to improve the high standards that we have set for ourselves.

The single principle that guides our teaching method is:
A tutor must elicit response that demonstrates understanding

We think that this principle is crucial because it will let you, the tutor, know with as much certainty as possible that your student has understood your lesson. We think that one-to-one teaching is about knowing that understanding has been achieved, not hoping that it has been achieved based on the quality of the teacher’s explanations.
It is common for some tutors to misunderstand our teaching ideas when they first apply to us, and often consider one-to-one teaching to be similar to a lecture. We believe that the first step to understanding our ideas is to realise that the effectiveness of your teaching is dependent on what you elicit from your student. If you would like to read learn more, please read the justification for our guiding principle.

Setting Lesson Goals

At the start of any period of teaching, you should establish the lesson goal. This may be something suggested by either teacher or student, but as a teacher it’s important for you to ensure that the goal has these two qualities:

Specific:	The goal should be clear, and not general. For example, stating that you would like to discuss a period of history doesn’t give the student a goal to aim at.
Measurable:	The student should be able to judge how successful he/she has been at achieving the goal. This is clearer with a more objective goal, such as a mathematical question, but is still possible with a subjective goal, such as a discursive essay-style question.

Why do we set goals? The first reason is because it will give your student the opportunity to achieve the goal without any further help from you, which is perfect. If you don’t state the goal then you won’t only take away this opportunity, but it’s very likely that you will have to lead your student towards a conclusion, which, as stated below, is something you should avoid.

The second reason to set a goal is so as to not unsettle your student during a lesson. We’re all aware of how difficult it can be to travel into the unknown, and stating a lesson goal will help your student to understand the point of your questions, relax, and put him/her in a better frame of mind for learning.

Mini-goals
A mini-goal is a goal within a goal. For example, if the goal is to answer an essay question, then a mini-goal might be to write the plan for the essay. There may then be mini-goals within that mini-goal, such as planning the introduction.

The purpose of a mini-goal is to break the goal down into more manageable pieces when the overall goal is too difficult to tackle by itself.

You should always give your student the chance to suggest the mini-goals him/herself before you state them (e.g. if he/she is having difficulty knowing where to start with the overall goal then you could ask “what should we do first?”). This is because ideally you want your student to set him/herself the mini-goals when you’re not there.

You may sometimes find that you have to state the mini-goals yourself, and this is ok, provided that you have given your student the opportunity to suggest them first. However, in either case, you must ensure that the context of each mini-goal is clear in regard to the overall goal. If the context isn’t clear then your student may find it unsettling for the reason given above (the second reason to set a goal).

Asking Questions - Creating the Space¹

Asking questions (or asking for demonstration) must be at the heart of your teaching. This doesn’t mean that a tutor should lecture briefly and then ask the student a question on that lecture; asking questions should be seen as a way to make your student think, and reach understanding with as little help from you as possible, and then verbalise his/her thought process. Indeed, some of the best lessons are those where a tutor’s only speech is to ask questions. Here are examples that demonstrate this idea.

A question that can be very difficult to resist when teaching is “do you understand?” or “does that make sense?” It’s important to realise that it’s not the student’s responsibility to judge whether he/she has understood something. If the student hasn’t displayed understanding of an idea then you cannot assume that he/she understands it, even if he/she claims to. If you do find yourself asking whether your student has understood an idea, then (if he/she says “yes”) follow up with “can you show me that you understand?”

Clarity
The way that you ask a question can be just as important as what you’re actually asking. The perfect questions are as clear and concise as possible. If a question is even slightly difficult for your student to understand then it will add extra difficultly to answering the question. By keeping your questions as short and simple as possible, and avoiding caveats, your student will be able to concentrate on one idea at a time. You should think about asking more, shorter, more frequent questions, rather than fewer, longer, less frequent questions.

Leading
Consider the questions “How would you characterise Lady Macbeth?” and “Would you say that Lady Macbeth is ambitious?” One question is asking for a student’s opinion, and the other is leading, it’s asking for agreement rather than genuinely asking for an opinion. You should be attempting to develop independent thought in your student, something that he/she can replicate without you. Any question that points to a possible answer is a leading question, and should be avoided.

Giving Students Time to Learn - Holding the Space¹

Holding the space is probably the simplest teaching idea we have, but it also tends to be the most difficult for a teacher feel comfortable with.

Once you’ve created the space for your student; created a period of time for your student to think about an idea and improve understanding, you have to hold that space, and not fill it with your own answers. It can feel very unnatural at first; there is an instinct to ‘help’ your student as soon as a question isn’t answered immediately, but you have to trust that your student is thinking about the question, and it’s vitally important that you don’t interrupt that thought process.

It’s not uncommon to feel that because you’re the teacher, you should be talking a lot during a lesson, because that is how you ‘teach’. This is reinforced by the style of teaching which most students are exposed to; both classroom teaching and lecturing tend to rely on the ‘teacher’ conveying lots of information, and filling every silence. However, when teaching a single student your style should be as far from classroom teaching and lecturing as possible. The best lessons are those where the teacher is asking short questions, and hardly speaking, and the student is giving long answers, not vice-versa.

Of course, taken to its extremes, this idea could lead to a standoff, where no-one speaks for a long period of time, and this will probably be counter-productive and unsettle the student. There are many signs that can tell you whether it is appropriate to break a silence, but reading these signs is a difficult skill. If you are new to the idea of holding the space then our advice is to slowly count to 10 in your head if you suspect that the silence is unproductive, and when breaking the silence, ask a question such as “what are you thinking?” or “how are you getting on?”

Your opinions
It can be very tempting to give your own opinions and interpretations during a lesson, especially when you think that your student is yet to come up with an interpretation which might be important for them to consider. However, you should try to avoid doing this, and make sure that you have given your student the opportunity to produce an opinion before introducing it yourself.

If you do state an opinion then it’s important to ask your student to argue for and against it, rather than doing so yourself. You will then be sure that your student has understood the ideas involved correctly.

When you feel that you student is happy to argue an opinion, you may decide to play devil’s advocate, introducing an opposing opinion, and asking your student to consider the pros and cons of each.

Dealing with responses
When your student has answered a question, you should consider whether they have communicated their understanding to you. It’s quite common for students to give answers that required understanding, but their answer didn’t actually involve verbalising that understanding. For example, an opinion from a text, where the student hasn’t referred to evidence in the text to support the opinion. It’s important that when a student gives an answer that contains ‘hidden’ understanding, you ask for the understanding. Simply saying “would you explain why” will usually be enough.

Why do we do this? It’s very possible for a student to produce a good answer despite not fully understanding the ideas behind that answer. For example if a student says that 2² = 4, then the answer is obviously correct, but the student may think that a² means a x 2.

Another reason to ask for understanding is because, if your student has misunderstood something, you need to know why. If you state that an answer is incorrect before asking for your student’s understanding then it’s likely that he/she will be disappointed, and reluctant to explain how they arrived at the answer, or they may guess at a different answer. This doesn’t give you an insight into the student’s understanding, and may provide a barrier to learning.
If you always ask for understanding before confirming whether an answer is correct or not then you will be able to pinpoint any mistakes in your student’s thought process. In fact, if the student has made a mistake then he/she will often realise it by simply answering the question “would you explain why.”

Other Skills

What has been discussed are our ideas about the mechanics of teaching; they are logical guidelines that we feel form the building blocks of developing a student’s understanding. However, we would be remiss not to mention the benefit that a teacher’s more human qualities can bring to a lesson. Empathy, enthusiasm, a sense of humour, and many more characteristics can be used to improve a student’s learning experience. What we’d like to clarify though, is that we think these qualities should be used in tandem with our teaching ideas above, not as a substitute for them.

There is an end goal to our teaching methods; ideally we want to create better students, not just students who are better at what they have been taught. We’re looking to develop self-awareness, to encourage students to learn independently. If you’re interested, please read this page about how to create self-awareness in students.

Contact info@bluetutors.co.uk