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Tutoring gifted students might seem like an oxymoron. If a student is doing well in math or reading, then why should they need a math tutor or a reading tutor? It may surprise you, but there are a lot of reasons why tutoring gifted students can be beneficial for their entire educational experience.

1. Tutoring gifted students allows them to have personalized lesson plans

Imagine how frustrating it would be to sit in a classroom where you are asked to listen to a lesson or do an assignment that you already know how to do. Gifted students often times get bored and lose interest in the school subjects that they excel the most in.  By tutoring gifted students in those subjects they can work at their own pace by doing lessons that are geared specifically to their level of learning. Personal tutoring sessions will help develop their skills as well as their love for the subject (instead of causing them to hate it due to boredom.)

2. Tutoring gifted students helps them reach their full potential

Some students do not need to work hard or apply themselves in order to master a particular subject.  This situation can affect the amount of effort they put into learning other school subjects as well.  Tutoring gifted students in their strong subjects can help them to develop those skills and feel a sense of satisfaction instead of giving up on the subject because it does not challenge them enough.  If a tutor can provide the appropriate level of instruction that helps the gifted student to develop and expand their skills this will help them reach their full potential.

3. Tutoring gifted students to help them become active learners

If gifted students have been in situations where learning new things is easy they might never have a chance to develop useful learning skills. The early school years might be easy for gifted students, but if they have been able to do well by sitting passively in class then this could pose a problem once they enter secondary and University level courses that require them to know how to learn more difficult material. Tutoring is one way for gifted students to learn how to learn more difficult subjects outside of the classroom. Tutoring sessions help develop study skills that will help the student once they continue on to higher education.

4. How can tutoring gifted students benefit the rest of the classroom?

Some gifted students struggle with behavioural issues at school because they are not being challenged by some of the school subjects. Being bored in class might cause them to become a ‘know it’ all or to talk with their friends during lessons. Acting out in class does not only affect the gifted student, but it also becomes a distraction to the rest of the class. By arranging tutoring for the gifted student they can have their own individual assignments to work on possibly during class time.  This type of arrangement would first have to be discussed with the classroom teacher.

The stigma around tutoring is that it is only for students who need help with a particular school subject that they struggle with. As you can see from the four points listed above, there are a lot of reasons why tutoring gifted students can be beneficial as well. If you have a gifted child or you know of some gifted students who are struggling in school, finding a private tutor for them could make a huge difference!

A student tutor can improve their own learning by tutoring others

Students who learn by sitting in a classroom might think they know what they just learned, but do they really?  The best way to ensure that you know how to do something is to teach someone else to do it.  Here are 3 ways a student tutor can gain a deeper understanding of a subject by tutoring someone else.

1. Have the student tutor a younger sibling

If your child is learning a challenging new subject you can help them learn it better by asking them to tutor their younger siblings.  This is a benefit of having a multi-child family, but student tutors don’t have to be limited to tutoring their own family members.

2. Arrange for student tutoring sessions in your neighbourhood

A neighbourhood is full of children of all ages who are all at different levels in their education.  This type of situation can be used for the benefit of the students by arranging student tutoring sessions with the other children in the neighbourhood. An older student tutoring a younger student is an arrangement that will not only help the younger student learn but it will also help the older student fully grasp the concept.  They have to learn it in order to be able to teach it.

3. Create role playing opportunities for the student to tutor someone else

For tutors who come to a student’s home for tutoring sessions sometimes even more learning can happen when the roles are switched.  Turning a tutoring session into a teaching opportunity for the student to teach what they are learning rather than solely learning from the tutor is simple.  Just ask the student to give a lesson that teaches the new topic that they have just learned.  By role-playing what would happen during an actual student tutoring session they will still get the same benefits by explaining the lesson to their tutor.  This will help them see what they still are not clear about so the tutor can help them grasp the concept more.

Teaching as a way to enhance learning can be done in virtually any situation.  If the student can explain the new subject or skill and help someone else to grasp the concept then they have surely mastered the lesson themselves. Being able to teach what they are learning will give the student a sense of accomplishment as well as a deeper understanding of the subject.  Give your child a chance to be a student tutor.  Whether it’s at home or in the community they are sure to learn more as they tutor others!

Photo Credit: CERDEC

If you say math is fun your kids are more likely to think math is fun!

If the adults that are around your kids have a negative attitude about math this could cause your child to have math related anxiety. On the flip side, if you focus on portraying to your kids that math is fun then they are more likely to think math is fun too.

Children absorb the behavior and attitude of the adults around them

From a young age children like to copy what they see their parents doing. Daughters see their mother carrying a purse, so they practice carrying around a purse to be like her. Sons see their fathers talking on the phone, so they pretend that their toy blocks are a telephone. It is normal for children to look up to their parents and to mimic their behavior and even their attitude about certain things.

In general there are fewer girls than boys who think math is fun

Perhaps as a mother you still feel like you are not very good at math. This attitude might have been adopted because the adults around you when you were growing up gave you the impression that only boys think math is fun, but not girls. Some research has been done that suggests that the math attitudes of parents and teachers can affect children’s attitudes about math in either a positive or negative way. This means that if parents, teachers and tutors focus on staying positive about math when they are around students, especially female students then this could help more girls think that math is fun too.

Take the opportunity to teach your kids that math is fun

1. Turn everyday activities like baking or shopping into math games.
2. Think out loud when you are paying a bill so your kids can see that you use math in your daily life and that it’s even good for adults to practice math.
3. Keep a positive attitude when helping your kids with their math homework and encourage them to feel a sense of accomplishment after completing a difficult math problem.
4. If you really don’t like doing math, hire a math tutor who can help your child with their math homework.
5. Even if you don’t like math you can still say the words “math is fun” to help your children develop positive math attitudes.

What do the 3 Rs have to do with a positive learning environment?

The 3 Rs in education are usually referring to:

   READING

WRITING

 ARITHMETIC

These are important elements of education, but there are 3 more Rs that are just as important for creating a positive learning environment that enables students to learn the basics like reading, writing and arithmetic. These 3 Rs are:

RESPECT

RESPONSIBILITY

READINESS

A positive learning environment facilitates mutual RESPECT

Respect is something that adults often think that they deserve, and yes, students should have the proper respect for their teachers, their parents and other adults in their life, like a personal tutor or sports coach. However, in order for adults to gain the respect from students, there needs to be some level of mutual respect that adults should have for the students as well. If adults perpetually treat students like children who are incapable of behaving respectably then they are setting the students up to fail. In the classroom teachers can help their students learn how to respect adults, other students and themselves by setting a good example. Even the way a teacher greets a student can be a lesson on respect.

Teachers developing mutual respect with their students

When the students arrive in the classroom if the teacher ignores the students as they walk into the room and yells at them all at once to take their seats and begin their assignments, this does not convey proper respect. If the teacher were to greet a student as he comes in the door by saying “Good morning Mr. Andrews” and shaking his hand this makes the student feel like he is being treated with respect and it invites him to then return the respectful greeting by saying “Good morning Mrs. Roberts”.  This is a basic lesson on how to develop respectful relationships in and out of the classroom.

Helping students develop a mutual respect for one another

Having a mutual level of respect for other students is necessary for creating a positive learning environment. Talking about respecting one another in the classroom at the beginning of the year is a good way to set up standards for how the classroom should operate. Teachers can help explain to the class that it is disrespectful to the other students if they are talking during class, because it is distracting and difficult for the other students to hear the teacher or pay attention to what they are working on. Rather than immediately going to the teacher to complain, a respectful way to deal with the situation would be to politely ask the student to please lower their voices or stop talking because it is difficult to hear. These types of scenarios can even be role played by the students so that the class can learn how to respond properly to these types of comments.

Giving students more RESPONSIBILITY cultivates a positive learning environment

Giving a student responsibility can be scary. It is easier for adults to do certain things themselves. In order to teach students to enlarge their capacity there has to be some transfer of responsibility. This is also important at home with the family. If parents continue to do everything for their children, then their children will grow up unable to do things for themselves and will rely solely on their parents to do everything for them. This does not help them to reach their full potential, but rather it hinders them and stunts their ability to develop proper skills. In the classroom this can be done by assigning classroom jobs, but also by helping students take responsibility for their work, for turning in assignments on time.

READINESS is a key factor in establishing a positive learning environment

This R is a little more subjective, but it is the key to the other Rs actually working.  Students need to be helped to learn what it means to be ready to learn. You can have a discussion about how this means putting away distracting things on one’s desk. Why students can’t have their phones during school, or can’t listen to music on their headphones during a lesson. Being ready means to be focused on the lesson, listening and watching. Students can also be helped to learn how to get ready to do projects by getting all of the necessary materials ready. Emphasizing the importance of being ready to participate in class discussions is also something to discuss with students early on in the year. If all of the students proactively practice readiness, this will help establish a positive learning environment for the entire class.

Does homework help improve learning?

Do your children ask you for homework help? Do you sometimes question why they need to do so much homework? Children of all ages are bringing home all sorts of homework assignments these days. Perhaps your child has more homework than you had when you were a student. Are you wondering if your child’s homework is just busy work or does their homework help them to improve important skills?

Quality homework assignments vs. busy work

Homework assignments that cause students to practice a variety of skills on a regular basis are quite effective especially for math and foreign languages. The brain thrives when it is able to practice these skills on a daily basis. There are however some types of homework that don’t seem to require much thought, but rather take up your child’s time.

In one sense this type of homework could be considered pointless, but on the other hand, all types of homework help students develop good work ethics. Regardless of if it seems useless, it is still good to encourage your child to complete the homework assignment in order to help them learn the lesson of completing jobs that are given to them. This will help them in the working world when they are asked to do seemingly brainless tasks that simply need to be done.

How to optimize the benefits of homework!

We all know that cramming gets the job done, but there is often little to zero retention of the subject material. You can help your child retain more information by helping them set up a homework schedule where they study the same amount of material in smaller sections over a longer period of time. For example, rather than reading fifty pages of Biology homework all at once, they can break up the reading into chunks of ten pages and read them throughout the week. This will help them build upon the information that they learned the previous days without getting overloaded.

Will homework help with test scores?

One way to help your child improve their test scores is to use part of their homework time to do sample tests. This will enable them to practice using their newly acquired skills by forcing them to apply the information to the sample test questions. This has proven to be much more effective than merely reading through the assigned reading material, and then forgetting much of it by the time the actual test rolls around. Taking practice tests will also help take the pressure off during the real test, and should help reduce some of the test taking anxiety.

Now, if you still feel like your child’s homework assignments are not effective in helping them learn, you can always talk to their teacher to ask why they are giving those types of homework assignments.  They might have a good reason. Some teachers might also be open to making changes to the homework assignments to make them more effective!