Reflecting on my Teaching: Introducing Student Pre-quiz Warm-ups
One thing I've realised as a tutor is that just because a student understands something during a lesson doesn't always mean they'll remember it a week or even a months time. It's very easy to assume that once a topic has been covered, it's "completely done", but I've learnt that long-term understanding comes from regularly revisiting and reinforcing those concepts.
After reflecting on my own teaching, I wanted to find a better way to check that my students were genuinely retaining what we had learnt, rather than simply recalling it in the moment. This led me to introduce personalised pre-quiz worksheets at the beginning of my lessons.
These worksheets are a little 'warm-up ' to the sessoinand help identify what each student needs to improve. I look back over previous lessons (using FEC to remind me what we covered), identify the concepts the student found challenging or commonly made mistakes in, and create a short worksheet that revisits those specific skills. Sometimes it focuses on content from the previous week, while other times it brings back concepts we covered months ago, with the aim of encouraging students to remember that knowledge rather than just forget it.
The worksheets also provide me with immediate feedback on what my students have genuinely remembered and what needs to be revisited. If a student struggles with a topic again, it's a reminder for me to adjust my teaching, explain it differently, or allow for them to practice it more instead of assuming they have completely 'mastered' it.
This small change has made me a more reflective tutor. Rather than focusing solely on covering content, I now focus on whether students are developing ongoing understanding. Eeach worksheet helps me evaluate the effectiveness of my teaching while giving students confidence that they truly remember the content beyond a single lesson.
