Master the Art of Engaging Tutoring: Proven Tips to Keep Your Students Hooked

Keeping your students motivated during your tutoring session is crucial. In this blog, I list a few strategies, tips, and examples that I have used over the years to keep my students engaged and improve their learning experience.

Discover the Student's Interests
‍Encourage students to share their interests so you can personalize their lessons. By incorporating their passions into the lessons, not only do you show interest in them as a person, but you also make the lessons more enjoyable.
Example: If a student is a fan of F1, you can practice kinematics with example exercises involving race cars.

Start with a Warm-up
‍Just like any other muscle and joint in the human body, the brains works best after a quick warm-up. Start each lesson with an engaging activity to immediately grab the student's attention. This could be a short review quiz or a game related to the material.
Example: Begin with a few rounds of hangman to review vocabulary or scientific terms from the previous lesson.

Avoid the Classroom Feeling
‍Break down complex topics into manageable pieces to prevent the student from feeling overwhelmed. Limit the theoretical explanation of each part to 10 minutes. Use exercises or visual demonstrations between explanations.
Tip: Useful tools include GeogeBra, PHET, Quizlet, etc. Youtube can also be a goldmine.

Prepare Your Lesson
‍Nowadays, there are so many fantastic tools available. To make the most of them, it's best to create an outline of how you want to structure your lesson beforehand. Then, create or find PowerPoint or Prezi presentations & interactive exercises.
Example: Create a slideshow with funny memes for grammar lessons.

Introduce a Fun Factor
‍Incorporate games and quizzes into the lessons to add a fun factor while reinforcing learning objectives. Games are most effective when introduced at the beginning of a lesson to grab attention or at the end to finish on a positive note.
Example: Play a quick game of Battleship to learn coordinates, or play a hero game where the heroes' powers are expressed in fractions to practice fraction calculations.

Switch Roles
Let your student explain something to you. This reinforces their understanding and helps you identify their knowledge gaps.
Tip: Gently guide the students during their explanation by asking critical questions, simulating what it's like to be a student.

Conclusion
‍By personalizing lessons and adding interactive elements, you greatly enrich the tutoring experience. By making learning engaging and fun, your student will remember more and won't mind having another lesson with you.