Today I had the opportunity to observe one of my fellow tutors teach a high school student English, giving me the opportunity to learn some new tutoring methods that could help me in my own session.

Working on essay writing, the session began by reviewing classwork and progress that had been made over the past week. This allowed the tutor to see how their student had done individually without their help, and was able to help them refine areas where this was needed. After this they moved on to working on quotes for the essay, and how to implement these properly into the text so that the writing flowed. Through the use of various techniques such as highlighting, brainstorming and using the whiteboard to sketch out ideas, the tutor and student worked together to form great base paragraphs to continue to develop. The use of the whiteboard was a great way for the tutor to understand the mental process of her student, and to come up with new ideas along the way.

Following this, the tutor and student returned to the essay that had been written over the past week, implementing the new quotes, sentences and ideas that they had come up with during the first half of the session. This allowed them to develop the essay further with even stronger techniques. To ensure that her student had absorbed what they had talked about, the tutor used the last 20 minutes to get her student to practice writing with a new essay question. Through this, the tutor tested her students’ ability to remember her quotes and techniques whilst practicing working under pressure. This demonstrated the tutor’s skill to be able to guide her student and also ensure that they were independent as well.

Overall, this observation was very helpful for me to see how best to structure an essay, collaborating together whilst also developing writing independence and self confidence.

Annabelle Molloy