Structuring Group Tutorials

“Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.” - Amy Poehler

Group learning activities are a great way to get children to learn from each other in the classroom. While the tutor or teacher plays a valuable role in teaching children content that they would have otherwise not known, children also inspire each other to learn the new and unfamiliar content. Hence, as a tutor, you should consider giving group tutorial lessons as well to encourage your students not only to learn from you but to learn from other students in the group tutorial setting as well. In fact, learning in a group could possibly change the students' outlook on learning entirely.

Let's face it, one child in a group tutorial setting may ask a question that the other children may not even have thought about, and when you provide the answer to this question, you are teaching all the children in your group something new.

More and more primary school learners are relying on private tutors to help them to gain a solid grasp on the content learnt at school. If you are a parent and you are considering sending your primary school child for tuition, you should consider allowing your child to take group classes. While private one-on-one classes are equally as effective (if not more effective), you can consider this option of tuition when your children are older and in high school. Group tutorials do, however, work well for primary school children.

As a tutor, how can you organise group learning activities?

While we may not have all the answers as to how you can organise group learning activities, we can surely give some advice to new private tutors wanting to teach groups. For one, it is important to organise group learning activities by considering the needs of all of the learners within a group.

What are Group Tutorials?

What the students think of group tutorials is very different to what tutors think of group tutorials. Tutors not only see group tutorials as a way to meet ends meet, but also as a way to support more than one student at a time academically. Group tutorials do give tutors the opportunity to make a living by doing tuition alone.

For students, group tutorials are a great way to get students thinking as well as a way to get students to understand subject-related content. In order to encourage students to learn from each other, you ought to prepare lessons that motivate learners to work together and assist each other.

As a tutor, you need to bear in mind that the point of tuition is to support each and every learner on his or academic journey. In an attempt to assist each student on his or her learning journey whilst still teaching a group of learners at the same time, the onus is on the tutor to find the best educational resources that will make the subject content easier for all learners to grasp.

Group tutorials is, as the name suggests, a way to tutor all learners within the group to ensure that no learner is left struggling with the subject content. In fact, you could say that group tutorials are a way to get all learners in a group to work together to solve the problems that seem challenging to them.

So, in other words, group tutorials are a means of helping students with everything from homework understanding to helping students prepare for their upcoming exams.

Group tutorials is also a way to ensure differentiated learning occurs for each student in your smaller group. Tutors, at first, informally assess each student through interaction in the tutorial class. It is this informal assessment that will enable the tutor to decide what type of support and help each student will need. Informal assessments during tutorial class will also help you to identify the type of learning barriers that certain learners have. In this case, you can include resources meant to specifically help learners in your group with the areas of learning with which they struggle with the most.

If you really plan out your group tutorials, the group tutorials will be everything that you have expected it to be and way more.

Explore some of the advantages of teaching group tutorials.

More About Teaching in Small Groups 

If you are keen on making sure that you teach your small group of learners well, you need to know everything about teaching in small groups. When you teach a small group of learners, you must be adequately prepared to teach this group of learners. Read more about teaching tutorials to groups.

When preparing to cater for every learner in your small group, the internet is your best tool. The internet is full of valuable resources that will help your students grasp subject content. You can also use the internet to stay abreast of your preparation and planning. You can use Google calendar to plan your classes and make sure that none of your small group classes clash with each other.

For primary school subjects, you’re going to have to ensure that you plan small group lessons that are fun. Try to make your lessons more student-centered. Get learners in your group to participate in various tasks and learning activities that gets them to problem solving. When learners learn in larger classrooms in the school setting, they are hardly ever encouraged to take them to problem solve and decide how to tackle a math problem. Instead, the teacher shares the steps involved in solving a math problem first and learners are expected to perform the same operations on other problems. However, as a small group tutor, you can engage your learners by giving them time to think about how a certain type of problem can be solved before you show them how to problem solve correctly.

As a tutor of a small group of learners, you must make sure that you liaise with the parents of your students who are struggling. Parents views can also guide your lessons.

When you decide that you are ready to take up small group lessons, you need to:

• Review each one of your tutorial lessons
• Plan new lessons based on your reviews of the previous lesson
• Know in advance what concepts and ideas you would like to focus on
• Have your exercises and activities ready in advance
• Divide your lesson into problem solving time, theory teaching, as well as learner-centered activities
• Have enrichment activities for learners in your group who grasp concept fasters than others
• Have support activities for learners who are struggling to grasp certain concepts

Teaching several students at once means that you have to get the students to cooperate. You need to get them to work in groups, correct one another, and invite them to think about their answers. The objective for each student in private tutorials is to no longer require them.

Do you know how much you should charge for private tutorials?

How to Teach Group Work?

To be totally honest, the first thing to remember when you decide to teach a group of students is to have a venue conducive to a group setting.  A clean, spacious and well-lit classroom environment is ideal for teaching a small group of students. For further inspiration on the venue where you give group tutorials, refer to the where can you teach group tutorials article.

The setting is the first step to making sure that you are ready to conduct group tutorial classes. The second key rule is to have your tables set in a way that encourages group work and collaboration. If you want children to work together, its best to arrange the furniture in your classroom in a way that will encourage interaction between students as well as group work.

The best suggestion is to always role model the type of behaviour that you expect from your group of students. Sociologists often state that the way that you behave and look has a massive bearing on the way that people perceive you. It is important to role model problem solving techniques and strategies if you are going to focus on getting your kids to problem solve in your classroom.

Here are some other suggestions that will help you to teach group work:

• Make sure to create a positive learning environment: you want to foster an environment where students in your group work together, encourage each other, and help each other
• Positive reinforcement: if your students are achieving good results or problem solving well, praise them or reward them in some form or the other.
• Try to use visual images and concrete objects to reinforce abstract concepts: not all learners can grasp abstract ideas. You will have some visual learners in your group so make sure to always use visual images and concrete objects to reinforce concepts taught.
• Make time for games and fun: believe it or not, learners to learn better when they are having fun and don't even know they are learning. Make sure to set aside time during your weekly lessons to play games related to concepts that you are trying to teach.
• Plan your lessons well so students stay focus for the entire duration of the lesson. Irrespective of the subject that you are teaching try to keep all your learners busy, active and concentrating for the full hour.

Again, you need to remember that the students who are coming for your tutorial classes are struggling with subject-related content. Sometimes, your role as a group tutor extends far beyond just teaching subject content. Part of your role as a tutor is to motivate your students and ensure that you are giving them the drive to learn by using fun resources and teaching techniques. You also need to teach the content that needs to be covered, but you need to adapt the content to what interests your learners.

Part and parcel of being a good tutor is to reflect on your own tutoring methods and strategies. The more you reflect on your own teaching practices, the better you will be as a tutor.

If you're interested in teaching groups, a good starting point is to create your own tutor profile on Superprof.

If you are not motivated as yet to start teaching groups, consider reading about the advantages of teaching private tutorials.