Keys to a Successful Tutoring Session

I believe that the key to a successful tutoring session starts from the beginning with a positive greeting and a professional attitude. I think that you need to have good body language so that the student feels comfortable. In Cindi's blog she states, "At the first the student was nervous...I believe her attentiveness however made him feel a lot more comfortable because he opened up rather quickly". The student felt more comfortable because the tutor was attentive and showed that she cared and was there to help. This is an important factor to a successful tutoring session. You should introduce yourself and then proceed to ask what it is that the student needs help with. If it is an assignment you should ask the student to read it out loud, if not you could always read it out loud yourself. In Melissa's blog she states, "...he read only the first paragraph of the student's paper...then the tutor sort of caught himself just focusing on the LOCs and not talking to the student, therefore he changed up his technique and got the student involved". It is very important to involve the student as much as possible. Reading out loud can be very useful because it incorporates both the tutor as well as the student.This can lead to a collaborative tutoring session. By doing this you give time to think about what is read and then you can take that time to formulate questions. When helping with an essay your main concern should be things like the thesis, tone or supporting details. This would be considered higher order concerns. Lower order concerns would be things like grammatical errors. These things should be given the least amount of time during a session. Although in some cases, things might be different. For example in Michelle's blog she states, "The other student was asking about more grammar issues that they had because the professor had stated that the student had good ideas they got lost in the punctuation problems. Although, this is considered a low order concern, it was a priority for the student because it was what was preventing them from the grade they felt they deserved". In this case the sessions priority concern was actually the grammar so a different approach is necessary. You should always try to lead with praise when spotting errors, but try not to cheer lead because this could lead a writer to believe that they have done a great job. Try to get as much done in a session as possible. You don't want to respond to late. Keep in mind that all tutoring sessions are different in the same way as the chaos theory. Remember that when the session concludes there might be a little fuzziness but that is normal and as long as you accomplished as much as possible and focused towards higher order concerns, the session will be a success.