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The Value Of Reinforcement In Tutoring

Why every tutorial should start by asking: "What did we cover last time?"

Date : 20/05/2016

Author Information

Gwilym

Uploaded by : Gwilym
Uploaded on : 20/05/2016
Subject : Maths

Reinforcement is the most valuable aid to learning. #59; While attention is crucial and understanding is important, the only certain way to embed learning that I have seen is repeated reinforcement.

When applying for teacher training positions, the interviews were focused on testing how I would teach certain topics. #59; Why does a sound diminish slowly with distance but rapidly when travelling through a wall? #59; What does it meant to say that a plant, or any organism is alive?

The first classes that I taught required me to shift my efforts towards attention. #59; For someone who understands their subject well, it is relatively easy to think up innovative ways of explaining the concepts of maths and physics;; #59; but how do you make a class of 30 plus teenagers listen to what you are saying? #59; How do you convince a fifteen year old, who is sitting metres away from his or her friends, and whose conversations with them in the playground have been interrupted by the class bell, that calculating the gradient of a graph or understanding in terms of forces why a satellite orbits the earth are more interesting than everything else that is going on in their lives?

Having the fortune to train at a supportive school with experienced mentors, that hurdle was also relatively easy to overcome, albeit with a great deal of work. #59; Classes can, and indeed must be, made interactive, with me, the teacher, stepping away from the blackboard. #59; For every step that is explained to the class, pupils must be given ample opportunity to practise using that new understanding. #59; I, the teacher, must circulate throughout the class ensuring that every pupil is able to complete the exercises.

After a few weeks, I began to see that even such a combination of explanation, followed by interactive learning, was not enough. #59; In the higher sets that cycle could be completed relatively quickly and in the lower sets it would take longer. #59; Yet in all classes the same problem would resurface: #59; no matter how well a topic had been learned (or taught), come the next lesson in one or two days time, it had been forgotten.

It was incredibly frustrating to see thirty plus blank faces in front of me when I would start a lesson hoping to pick up where we had left off the time before. #59; Of course none of them had completely forgotten the previous lesson, and this is how learning works: #59; things sink in gradually, with gaps being filled and fundamentals built upon with each successive exposure.

For lesson planning this meant starting each lesson with a recap of the previous lesson, to the extent that with some of the lower sets the lesson plan would land up being half a lesson out of step, with the first half of each lesson covering the previous lesson`s topic. #59; The higher sets needed less reinforcement partly because of better understanding, and partly because much of the reason that pupils land up in higher sets is that they engage with learning outside of the classroom, principally through more and better structured homework. #59; In effect, they do their own reinforcement.

This principle applies even more to tutoring. #59; As a tutor, not only does reinforcement have the same benefit of strengthening learning;; #59; it provides a greater incentive for the pupil to learn in the first place. #59; Often the course of lessons in tutoring is pupil led, with the pupil bringing to the lesson problems they are having with the subject at school, or past exam papers. #59; This can lead pupils to feel that once they have covered a topic with you then they are not going to see it again, a problem exacerbated by the fact that tutors typically don`t set homework.

Start your tutoring session by asking your pupils what they covered in the previous lesson. #59; When they struggle to remember everything (which they will), encourage them to refresh their memories by looking in their exercise book. #59; There is no more effective way to show them that what they learn with you will be useful again, that making notes has immediate value and is also the essential step in reinforcing the learning that they achieve with you.

This resource was uploaded by: Gwilym