Today I had the lovely opportunity of observing Jake's maths lesson with Lucas. The lesson began by asking Lucas how he feels with the recent school work, which is a great way to check in with a student's progress and allow them to stay grounded by reflecting with where they are currently at. Lucas expressed uncertainty with how to change parameters in trigonometry. Before jumping straight into any questions, Jake began by explaining the theory of behind it which effectively stengthened his student's understanding by bringing it back to the basics. Then, Lucas shared how he had just completed the product rule in differentiation and would like to learn the chain rule this lesson ahead of his school. I thought it was inspiring how Jake allowed his student to lead the lesson's content in what he would like to focus. This flexibility to cater to the student's dynamic personal needs encapsulates the unique value of private tutoring.
One approach I admired was Jake's use of direct eye contact while explaining the theory of chain rule for a few minutes. Eye contact is often underappreciated in private tutoring as we may feel the need to lead with diagrams and example questions immediately. However, I observed today how the power slowing down and talking with your student straight in the eye increases their engagement and makes tutoring more conversational in a safe envrionment, as well as helping the student feeling more like a collaborative part of the learning process.
As Jake moved through example questions using the chain rule, from simpler to more complex problems, he consistently asked does that make sense, and made the process easy to by explaining each step of U-substitution and showing the proof of product rule. Instead of simply giving the answer every time, Jake would ask Lucas what he thinks the answer would be, prompting him to think independently and encourage his critical thinking and problem solving skills. Overall, I was impressed with how warmly Jake engaged his student Lucas as they shared some laughter throughout the lesson about the maths problems they were completing.
