4th October 2019 14:50
By Blue Tutors
We speak to our tutors all the time about the best way to tutor and about Tutoring Standards’ pedagogy, and a common discussion is the difference between classroom teaching and tutoring. Understanding this is the first step to becoming a good tutor, and also understanding that the skills required for each are actually very different.
Some people like tutoring but don’t like teaching large groups, others are the opposite, and the reasons for this might be because of the way we interact with students in each situation. Obviously in classes we’re talking to a large group rather than an individual, and when tutoring we have, hopefully, the student’s full attention, and the student has ours.
When we’re tutoring it’s important to try and make it feel natural, much more like a conversation with a friend than a stunted mechanical lesson. A tutor needs to react to what the student says and does; lesson planning is great, but it’s not possible to plan for every eventuality and students’ responses can change the direction a lesson takes. Tutors need to have empathy and focus on the individual in front of them to decide what question to ask next.
Classroom teaching should not be nearly so reactive to each individual’s responses in a lesson. Teaching a group of students is much more like a performance in front of a group of people. Experienced tutors often want the same reactions from a class that they get in a one to one situation, but this isn’t going to happen. A class of students don’t have to give their teacher undivided attention to be taking everything in. You don’t have to look at a radio to listen to it.