22nd May 2015 12:00
By Blue Tutors
Exam season is upon us again and tutors are working like mad to prepare their students for upcoming GCSEs and A levels. Whilst some have been working steadily with their students throughout the year, others have been drafted in fairly last minute specifically to help prepare students for exams. Tutors usually have fairly set routines as to how to help students prepare for exams, from tips about how to write the perfect exam answer, to reminding their students to look after their health and wellbeing. Getting these relatively simple messages across can often be more challenging than it appears, and tutors need to develop individualised strategies to get through to their students.
If students have been doing practice exam answers for weeks before the exam they are likely to be more relaxed, but many tutors find that students are very reluctant to do this part of revision. It can be frightening to have to work under timed conditions, especially knowing that the revision process is not complete. It can be very disheartening for students to do practice papers and perform poorly, even though such a performance is useful as it tells the tutor what areas to work on. The trick for tutors is to find the right time to introduce practice papers; too long away and the student may lose their confidence over a bad result, and too close and the student will not have time to adequately prepare.
Many tutors find that it is even more difficult to persuade students to look after their health and wellbeing. Tutors and parents can tell students ‘till they are blue in the face that they should get enough sleep, but this rarely happens in practice. Students either stay up late chatting with friends online about upcoming exams, or they stay up late working. The goal here is not to be too draconian, but to make sure that students understand that productivity levels fall dramatically when students are tired. A further strategy that many tutors have to learn the hard way is to be careful about mentioning your other students. You may want to tell the student that they are not alone, but private tuition is, well, private, and students don’t like the idea that they are competing with your other students, or that you might talk about their performance with them. The bottom line is that this is a stressful time for students, and tutors should tread carefully whilst they maintain their support.