Today I was able to observe Finnegan’s session with his student Cillian from 5-6pm. Finnigan was able to relate with his student in many aspects of learning which created a comfortable learning environment. He was also incredibly attentive to his student’s needs which insured he could adapt his teaching methods and be successful.
They went through differentiation and Finnigan was very effective at teaching these new concepts and bringing previous knowledge that they had worked through into his teaching. I was able to witness his patient and kind approach to teaching which insured his student Cillian understood exactly what methods were effective and should be used to answer the questions.
He was able to carefully break down questions so that it was easy for his student to learn the new concepts. Then, Finnegan helped his student to test and apply this new learning to more challenging questions which could be used in an exam. He always made sure that his student had enough time to have a go at the questions first after learning the basics before stepping in and taking the lead so that his student had the opportunity to test themself on what they understood and what they had to work on to ensure that Cillian got the answer right.
Towards the end of the lesson, Finnigan creatively made a quiz about the new concepts that they learned about which was not only fun for Cillian and instilled a sense of enthusiasm for the content, but also really helped to test his knowledge on what they learned.
This observation was incredibly inciteful and allowed me to reflect on what I could improve on as a tutor. It really taught me to be adaptable to different students’ needs and also different ways of breaking down challenging concepts for a student. Well done, Finnigan!!
Samuel Lotter
