Tutoring advice/preperation (1 Viewer)

[Gods_Spear]

Hello everyone,
I’ve just been offered a small tutoring gig helping out a family friend with year 7 maths. He’s been struggling a lot and they’ve offered me a fair wack of money to help him out a couple hours a week because he really wants to improve and is feeling quite frustrated. I got a b6 and an e4 (low mind you) so I know I won’t struggle with the actual maths but what should I work on leading up to it (in a few days) to be able to properly explain the concepts? I don’t want to half ass it. I was sent some photos of his homework and it’s just simple algebra with negative and positive numbers which I think is what is tripping him up. At this level is it enough to just explain it? Thank you, I might be overthinking this but it feels like a big responsibility for some reason

 

[Average Boreduser]

Hello everyone,
I’ve just been offered a small tutoring gig helping out a family friend with year 7 maths. He’s been struggling a lot and they’ve offered me a fair wack of money to help him out a couple hours a week because he really wants to improve and is feeling quite frustrated. I got a b6 and an e4 (low mind you) so I know I won’t struggle with the actual maths but what should I work on leading up to it (in a few days) to be able to properly explain the concepts? I don’t want to half ass it. I was sent some photos of his homework and it’s just simple algebra with negative and positive numbers which I think is what is tripping him up. At this level is it enough to just explain it? Thank you, I might be overthinking this but it feels like a big responsibility for some reason

blud ur overthinking it. I know ppl in yr 10 tutoring kids in yr 7 in my school.

 

[iloveeggs]

honestly yeah you are overthinking it but as a fellow overthinker this is what i would do

for y7 level maths i would first sit with the students and go through some of the questions they are working on. ask them to talk you through the steps as they work through (sort of explaining their logic) and when you see something they are getting wrong, let them get it wrong, and after they are done or if they are stuck explain why they are wrong and an alternative way to think about it.

when they become more confident with the logic work through more problems and slowly build up to it until they can do timed practise and harder questions.

this works for literally any level of maths imo. unless they literally have 0 clue what the concept is and dont even understand what the question means you should ALWAYS make them do questions based on what they already know and work from there. if they sort of get it but dont know how to do questions, first try to teach them your way of solving the question and then if they are still confused go back to the content and then try again.

this is how i self studied calculus at the start of y10 as an accel 2u student, after i sort of understood the concept i automatically started doing questions and went back to study the more niche content if i felt like i was lacking an understanding on what i was doing. maths is just mostly practise

 

[carrotsss]

what @iloveeggs said is pretty much spot on, beyond that you’ll sorta get a reading for the kind of student they are pretty quickly, some kids will just need you to keep them up to date while others you’ll be able to go ahead, just sorta keep with their pace. in terms of explanations it takes a bit of practice to figure out the best way too explain things but it’s not too hard, just avoid being condescending or seeming frustrated/impatient and you’ll be fine.

 

[funnytomato]

I don't have much experience teaching at this level let alone give any proper advice. But from what you described it sounds like(I might be wrong though) your family friend should probably work on his arithmetic first (probably chuck away his calculator if he's already using one) before moving to anything else.

In particular check and work on his addition/subtraction/multiplication/division, times table and order of operations. It's boring but you have to drill it.

On after that concrete foundation is built work on more complicated concepts like negative numbers, fractions and then add , multiply/divide fractions: think about where it originated from and think about how to explain those in a way that he can intuitively understand.

 

[iloveeggs]

also by asking them to explain their logic before they do a certain step you can stop them from memorising. a lot of kids that dont actually understand maths cope by memorising things they think are "tricks" to concepts they dont understand and these tricks work for easier questions maybe but not always

maths is obv not memorisable and also doing a problem with a solid logical understanding even if it takes longer than just teaching them a method to remember is always worth it. thy should be able to explain exactly why they are doing each step in their working very clearly

 

[SS173]

I have been tutoring students at every level for many years.
Based on my experience, my advice is first to ask the students to read their textbook. It is unbelievable that many teachers are not asking students to read their textbooks. I had students who can easily solve the problems when I explain the question, but they were not understanding it when they read themselves.
In the same topic I recommend ICE-M textbooks at every level. I went through almost all the textbooks and study materials used in NSW schools. In my opinion they are the best ones for explanation and for the selection of the problems.