23rd March 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Skill set identification to improve grades
This week I had a lesson with a thirteen year old, who I have been tutoring now for about 3 months. We had already had several sessions on Creative Writing, during which we had looked at the openings of several novels in order to analyse how the authors had created suspense. My student had then, for homework, attempted to use some of the skills he had identified as being used by the authors. However, there was just something lacking in his writing. There was no real sense of delay in the revelation of the suspenseful moment. Despite correctly picking out the use of description by the authors as a tool for delaying revelation, the student continued to rely on the same old techniques of short sentences and questions to indicate rising panic, or fear.
Last week, however, I changed tack. In the lesson we looked at a poem called ‘Wind’ by Ted Hughes. ‘Wind’ is packed with metaphors and similes, a poem where imagery is far more important than many of the other poems used at school now. Through this poem the student saw the power of the metaphor as a narrative tool. How description isn’t just a pause in the story but how it can itself create progression. I then set him the homework task of continuing the story he had started writing the week before.
This week, we had a breakthrough. The homework he submitted had leapt up a level. His use of metaphor and similes took his writing beyond that of a schoolboy task into something that was really enjoyable. “It was easy” he said, “I don’t know why I haven’t done it before.”
Sometimes, tutoring is about stepping back from what the syllabus requires. It’s about identifying a particular issue a student has and focussing entirely on that for a while. It’s about providing the student with the building blocks to create a real improvement in their school work. His beaming, proud face said it all. A step back, to ensure a step forwards, or two, had worked and he had gained much confidence from the feeling.