Tutor Help: Personalised Learning

While the content you’re teaching might be the same, every student is different and has different needs. Personalised learning can boost engagement, academic achievement, and confidence. It is also a great way to develop the teacher-student relationship at the start of the tutoring. Therefore, Scholar Hub have put together some tips to help tutors tailor their lessons for each student:

• Learning Style - this is the first thing you need to learn about your student because the way in which you deliver content should be determined by this. If you tailor your teaching for their learning style, your student will have a better grasp of the content and will do so more quickly.
• Personalised Goals - work together to set achievable goals based on the student. Everyone starts somewhere different and personalised goals as opposed to broad ones can help keep the student motivated.
• Interests - you can easily adapt content to match your student’s interests, which will make the lesson more engaging. For example, making a maths problem sports-based or using the name of their favourite celebrity in a problem.
• Regular Assessments - regular assessments are a great way to assess(!) not only the progress of your student but also the efficacy of your teaching style. Moreover, student strengths and weaknesses can change over time and so regular testing will highlight these changes for you.
• Pacing - while a learning plan is a helpful tool to organise sessions, it is important to adapt pace as some topics may require longer to grasp while others may come instantly to your student and they will become bored spending far longer than they need to on it.
• Learning environment - some students are confident and very happy to be challenged while others require encouragement and reassurance. A learning environment that is positive for your student is key to supporting and motivating them, so it is great to figure out what they need early on.
• Feedback - be open to and encourage regular feedback from your student. They may know better than you whether something is working for them, and so allowing for regular feedback from them will help you further personalise lessons for them.