One-to-one Sessions
Running one-on-one tutoring sessions as a Yipiyap is a really enjoyable aspect of the role. These sessions allow you to focus on the individual needs of your tutee, tailoring your support to help them succeed. You have no other learners around you, which means less opportunity for distraction, but at the same time this means you may need to think of creative ways to keep your student engaged. This article will walk you through the essentials of running effective one-to-one sessions, helping you to build confidence and deliver meaningful support.
The Benefits of One-to-one Sessions
Bespoke Support
You can tailor your session completely to meet the specific needs of the student, making your support as bespoke as possible.
Focused Attention
With no distractions from other students, you can give the student your full attention, making it easier to address their challenges.
Flexible Pacing
In a group setting, you’ll find that students are working at different levels. However in a one-to-one, you can move at the individual student’s pace, ensuring they fully understand the material before moving on.
Relationships
As you have more time with each other, one-to-one sessions can help build trust and rapport, making the student more comfortable and open to learning
Planning An Effective One-to-one
As with any tuition session, planning and preparing beforehand is key to make sure you get the most out of the time.
Step 1: Get to know your students!
1. Meet your key contact
Similarly to our guidance in the Lesson Planning article, the best place to start is by meeting with your key contact or the student’s classroom teacher to find out if there is anything that you should know about the tutee. Ask those same questions:
- What are their current knowledge levels?
- What challenges do they face?
- How do they learn best?
Make notes and use this to create a character profile for your student, it will be really helpful for planning and for when it comes to meeting them.
2. Create an introductory lesson
Prepare an introductory lesson that you can use for the first time you meet your student. The purpose of this lesson is to not only gauge how they learn and what their strengths and weaknesses are, but to also build a strong foundation for a relationship between you, setting you up for successful future sessions.
In this lesson, it’s a good idea to create a presentation, and things you could include are:
About me section:
- Why have you decided to become a Yipiyap?
- What are your interests?
- What are your future goals?
About you section: This could include both personal and educational questions.
- What are their interests?
- What do they like about the subject?
- What areas are they confident in?
A final tip for this introductory session would be to print out the exam specification for the subject and go through it with the student. Ask them to highlight any areas they feel comfortable with and any areas that they struggle with - give them ownership over their learning!
Rumsfeld’s Logic
The whole purpose of the activities above are to gauge what the student knows. They will have some knowledge about themselves, and that is a great place to start, but sometimes student’s don’t know what they don’t know! Donald Rumsfeld looked at this in more detail, and stated there are four categories of knowledge. You will have to look at these when tutoring, they are:
Known knowns
Known unknowns
Unknown knowns
Unknown unknowns
The first two are the ones that learners will be able to tell you about. They will usually have some ideas about what they know and what they do not. It is worth confirming this, though you don’t need to spend loads of time on this (confidence is not the same as knowing something).
Known unknowns are a good place to start your sessions and where to plan for in your initial sessions. This will help them to get a feeling of autonomy in their learning and boost their confidence.
The 0thers are a little bit tricker…
“There are unknown unknowns.”
Unknown knowns (things they do not know they know) are good to discover to boost confidence, but once a learner is confident in it and can do well on the subject, you don’t need to focus on it.
Unknown unknowns are things they do not know that they do not know. Looking at a syllabus, going through past papers and similar are all worth doing to find out what they are.
Introductory starter activities are also useful activities to check on which activities are in groups one to four. You can then begin to address these gaps in the main activities for the session. These should be kept reasonably interactive with the learner having opportunities to work on exam technique themselves and getting feedback on their work.
Learning Techniques
So, you’ve gathered all the information you need and you’ve identified your student’s strengths and weaknesses. How’d you start off your first ‘actual’ one-to-one session?
1. Create a Positive Working Environment
It’s important to create an environment where your student feels comfortable and happy to ask you questions,
Warm Welcome: Begin the session with a friendly greeting to put the student at ease. Ask them how they’re doing, how has their day been so far? You can treat them like a person, not just a student! Give them some ownership too - if you know your focus area for the lesson, ask if there’s anything specific in the topic they’d like to go through.
Set Clear Goals: At the start of the session, discuss what you both hope to achieve. This helps set a clear direction and gives the student a sense of purpose.
Encourage Open Communication: Let the student know that they can ask questions at any time, very much like your RD does to you! Emphasise that there’s no such thing as a “silly question” and that their input is always valuable.
2. Focus on Individual Needs
During the session, the student’s needs should be at the forefront of everything you do.
Ask Questions: Regularly check in with the student by asking questions like, “Does that make sense?” or “Would you like to go over that again?” This helps you gauge their understanding and adjust your approach if necessary.
Be Adaptable: Be flexible with your teaching methods. If your student doesn’t understand a concept, try explaining it in a different way or using a different example. Always be prepared for this to happen and think of alternative ways of explaining, perhaps bring different resources just in case.
Provide Practice Opportunities: Give the student time to practise what they’ve learned. This could be through exercises, quizzes, or discussing real-life applications of the concept.
What if your student isn’t engaging?
Don’t give up and be patient!
Continue to use good questioning techniques, such as giving advance warning that you will ask a question on the topic you are working on.
Make good use of silences after a question. You can count slowly to five in your head, have a sip of water, etc so that the learner has time to process and formulate an answer.
If you still don’t get an answer, try to break the question down into smaller parts, for example, “What is 1/5 divided by 3/4? can become “What is the method for dividing fractions?” to “What is keep flip change?” etc. Then, you can work your way back up once the student has been able to answer.
If you do this and they don’t know, you have a good idea of what needs explaining to them for them to access the material.
If you are struggling with the student’s behaviour, please use the guidance provided in our Managing Behaviour article, and remember you can always speak to another member of staff and your RD for further support.
How do you end your One-to-one session?
Once you have completed your main activity, take some time at the end of the session to reflect.
Feedback to/and from your student
You can share feedback and be encouraging at this point. Ask the student to give you their own feedback too! This will help you gather the information you’ll need for their future sessions.
What progress have they made?
What would they like to work on next?
What helped things to click for them?
Feedback to your key contact/classroom teacher.
Make sure to feed back to your key contact/classroom teacher. They will want to know how the sessions are going and how the student is progressing. Find out how best they’d like you to do this.
Do they have a student log they’d like you to fill in each time
Would they prefer you to make your own spreadsheet?
Or is verbal communication OK?
