Wise Science Tutoring Manual Module 2: Tutoring Nuances – Helping Students Understand April 2021 Jennifer (Jenny) Keller Module 2: Tutoring Nuisances How to Know when a Student Truly Understands As a tutor, your main goal is to help students understand their classes’ concepts, but how do we know they understand? In his book What Smart Students Know: Maximum Grades, Optimum Learning, Minimum Time, Adam Robinson writes that you do understand a concept until you can: “define it in your own words, give your own examples of it; [and] explain its relationship to other concepts (p132).” He stresses that this understanding does not just happen from passively looking at information in a textbook. You have to understand through active learning – connecting the new information you are given with information you already know. Then “shaping it and organizing it into something that is your creation (p 133).” Tutoring as a Safe Harbor The best way we can help students to understand concepts give them a safe understanding environment where they feel it is okay to make mistakes. Mistakes are part of learning; after all, if we knew everything, we wouldn’t have to learn it. Here a few hints to help make students feel comfortable about making mistakes in tutoring: • • • • • • Remind students that feeling uncomfortable with new material and making mistakes is part of the learning process. It is just their brain trying to fit the new information into what they already know. Adam Robison states, “If your brain isn’t a little shaken up by something new, you missed the point.” If your student is reluctant to work problems or answer questions, say something along the lines of, “make your mistakes here so we can fix them instead of on your test.” Students often come to you and are so overwhelmed they do not know what they do not know. Help your student find out what they DO know about a topic, even if it is just the basics. This gives you a foundation to build on. When your student makes a mistake, work with them to figure out why the mistake was made and then ways to avoid making it again in the future. Help them come up with a list of steps for solving a complex problem or phases in a process so they can practice a problem on their own. During complex problems or processes, help your students break them down into smaller steps. When they master one step, this gives them a small success that allows them to build up their confidence while working towards the goal of understanding. Reinforce successes, no matter how small. Cognitive Apprenticeship: Verbalizing Thought Processes Rule number 1 of tutoring is, “never tell a student something you can ask them.” Verbalizing a thought process is the best way to get concepts into long-term memory. The process of modeling your thought process while working through a process is known as cognitive apprenticeship. The University of Rochester wrote about it in their Tutor Training Manual: Cognitive Apprenticeship takes the principles of traditional apprenticeship and applies them to thinking. How do you learn how to change the tire on your bike or cook a meal? Certainly, you can read a book to learn how to do these things, but traditionally you would know by watching someone else do it, a master. A large percentage of our brain is devoted to vision, so it’s no surprise that people, in general, learn how to do something new by watching someone else who knows how to do it well. Cognitive apprenticeship is no different, except it is a cognitive or mental skill that is on display. In this case, the master or teacher makes his/her thinking visible when they work on a problem by talking it through out loud. In this way, you are modeling to the student how you solve the problem. 2 Module 2: Tutoring Nuisances The trick to cognitive apprenticeship is to pull away from the support slowly. Start off modeling everything at first, but as students start to learn how they learn and process new information, begin to pull back on the modeling and encourage them to model for you. This motivates students to become more independent and confident in all their classes. Modeling For students to know the proper way to do a problem or decipher a process, they need to see the correct way. There is nothing wrong with working an example for a student as long as you verbalize your thought process along the way. In What Smart Students Know, Robinson states that "if you can at least understand what you’re doing, eventually you’ll understand why a technique or formula works, too.” Having the correct order to work on a problem gives students something they can use to navigate the concepts’ conceptual part. Open-ended vs. Closed-ended Questions It’s important to acknowledge that not all questions are alike. Closed-ended questions have a simple answer – an answer that is one to three words. These questions have a place in tutoring but should not be the bulk of the question types used. They are suitable for getting confirmation or need specific information from your student. However, they do not encourage students to elaborate on their answers or explore the process further. Open-ended questions, on the other hand, naturally draw out more in-depth explanations. They encourage students to think about content critically and, maybe more importantly, how they learn. Here are some examples of closed-ended questions and some examples of how to turn them into open-ended questions: Closed-ended Questions “Do you understand?” • • “What did you get for number 3?” • • “When is your test?” • • Open-ended questions “Let’s do a brain dump. Will you tell me everything you understand about this topic? “Can you explain to me the steps we used to solve this problem? “Can you explain how you got your answer for number 3?” “How did you come to that answer for number 3?” “What is your study plan for your next test?” How do you plan to review for your upcoming exam?” Some More Questioning Strategy Tips 1. Use Wait Time - Give the student enough time to think about and respond to a question. Give them at least 20 seconds to answer before offering any hints. 2. Only ask one question at a time. Asking too many questions at once might overwhelm students. 3. Use learning resources. If available, use the student’s text or lecture notes, and if not, use other learning resources to demonstrate where to find answers to questions. This models how to find answers to questions while setting the expectation that you are not the holder of all the answers. Active Listening 3 Module 2: Tutoring Nuisances Asking questions only works if you listen to the answer. Active listening involves more than just hearing your student. It is not replying until you fully understand what was said through both verbal and nonverbal cues. You can accomplish this by doing two things: never interrupting a student’s thought process and always summarize what you understand the student means. Nonverbal cues are problematic in an online environment. We only have a small window with only our students’ faces to pick up on subtle clues, but it is essential to make eye contact with our cameras as often as possible and keep our student’s video feed open at all times. By seeing our students’ faces, we can pick up on any confusion and frustration our students may be feeling. Summarizing what students say shows them that you were listening and that you understood what they meant. It also allows them to clear up any misunderstandings that may have occurred. If you don’t understand enough to summarize, then ask them some clarifying questions. Some examples of summarizing statements include: “It seems like you're saying...” “So basically, what you are saying is ...” “It sounds to me like…” Facilitating Learning Helping students learn how they learn best helps build their confidence and prepare them for future classes. Everyone learns differently, so here are a few ways to help your students. A Word on Learning Styles Learning styles were first proposed by Neil Fleming, an education inspector in New Zealand. He pioneered the first test for determining one’s learning style with his V.A.R.K questionnaire. V.A.R.K. stands for Visual, Aural, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic – the four learning styles. When students come to you, they might say they prefer one kind of learning style. They have been told their whole lives that that is their preferred learning style and have been given a list of study techniques that work best with that style. New studies have shown that students learn best when using a wide variety of study techniques. Even the VARK website has noted this, stating that 50-70% of people are multimodal. This means that while it may be true that learn better from pictures than words, making them a visual learner in Fleming’s eyes, that doesn’t mean other styles and techniques won’t work for them. Visual learners might feel they learn better looking at a diagram, but have them write out the steps in a process depicted in the diagram too. Learning is the process of creating new neural pathways. The more neural pathways students can connect to a new piece of information, the better they will understand it and the easier it will retrieve on a test. For more information on VARK and VARK strategies, visit the following links: VARK Questionnaire - https://vark-learn.com/the-vark-questionnaire/ Visual Learner Strategies - https://vark-learn.com/strategies/visual-strategies/ Aural Learner Strategies (AKA Auditory Learner) - https://vark-learn.com/strategies/aural-strategies/ Read/Write Learner Strategies - https://vark-learn.com/strategies/readwrite-strategies/ Kinesthetic Learner Strategies - https://vark-learn.com/strategies/kinesthetic-strategies/ Multimodal Strategies - https://vark-learn.com/strategies/multimodal-strategies/ 4 Module 2: Tutoring Nuisances Vocabulary for Understanding Every class has its own vocabulary. Knowing this vocabulary and definitions is vital for passing the exams and understanding the lectures and concepts. The best way for students to learn the course’s language is to define terms in their own words. Have them learn the book or teacher’s definition first, but have them create their own definition to ensure they understand the concept and have not just memorized it without any context. If you notice your student is stuck on a specific definition or is getting two or more terms confused, you can have them do an exercise known as focused listing. Start by writing the term in the middle of the whiteboard space and then having your student tell you all the things they know about that term or closely related ideas. You may need to ask some questions to get them started or help them along if they get stuck, but you will have a sort of concept map of the vocabulary word by the end. There are many more nuisances to tutoring and there will be more trainings in the future on entire topics. If ever have a question about how to handle a situation or want to request a training topic, let Jenny know. 5
