How To Conduct Small Group Tutorials

Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere. Chinese proverb

If you are a tutor, you may be considering conducting smaller group tutorials as opposed to having one-on-one classes. If you have about 5 to 6 students who are in the same group needing help with the same subject, a great strategy for a tutor is to combine these students and conduct group tutorial classes instead. You will save much time if you conduct tutorials with smaller groups of learners. Remember to keep the groups as small as possible so you can still provide individual attention to each student. 

If you are conducting small group tutorials, you need to make sure that your students are still getting their money's worth, but at the same time having a tuition class with a few learners is a great way for you to make ends meet while helping students to learn.

By tutoring students, you are helping them gain the tressure that they require to pass the year.

Here are some tips on how to plan private group tutorials.

The Advantages of Group Teaching

The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, "The children are now working as I did not exist. Maria Montessori

For students who want to take private tutorial lessons, there are many options available and of course if you are one of the tutors wanting to give private tutorial classes, you can consider the advantages of teaching private tutorials.

Superprof tutors offer the option for learners to take group tutorial lessons that are charged at a far cheaper rate than private one-on-one tutorials.  You may think that group teaching is only of benefit to your students, but it is also a very big advantage for you as a tutor.

What are the advantages of teaching private group tutorials?

There are several advantages to teaching private group tutorials. Students can learn from each other. Sometimes students find it hard to fathom what adults are trying to explain to them. Students sometimes find it far easier to understand their peers. In smaller groups, students have the chance to explain subject content to each other and discuss content that seems unfamiliar for all learners in the group.

Students tend to boost each others' spirits and morale. A group tutorial class provides a positive and uplifting learning environment where each and every learner can freely express what it is that he or she is struggling with.  While you may have some students who are highflyers and perform better than others, you can really adapt your worksheets or teaching style to cater for all of your learner's levels (the weaker learners and the stronger ones).  You can also manage to help each and every learner within the private group.

While private group tutorials are not at all private one-on-one lessons, students tend to benefit from learning in smaller groups. Smaller groups allow each student to get individual attention. Since government school classrooms cater for about 40 or more students at a time, a smaller class of about 10 students is far more manageable for both the tutor and the student who is trying to get the most knowledge that he or she can from his or her tutor.

Again, by teaching groups, you can conduct more intensive group sessions just before exam time. You could also have regular homework sessions once a week or catchup classes and even holiday study programs. By having regular classes and holiday programs, you are making sure that each student is practising what he or she learnt and recalling what he or she has studied.

There are certain subjects that you can teach more easily in groups than individually. Languages can be effectively taught to smaller groups of students. So, whether you want to teach Isizulu, Afrikaans or English, group lessons are the way to do so. When you have a group of students learning vocabulary in a language together, you can allow them to converse with each other in the language they are learning. Through informal conversation, learners tend to learn more. Group lessons are also great should you be teaching a foreign language like Spanish or French.

You can also conduct small group lessons for music enthusiasts. You can surely teach the violin or guitar to a small group of learners.

While group tutorials are far less costly for each child in the group, you as a tutor do tend to make more money when you tutor groups as opposed to tutoring individual students. The more hours of group tutorials that you choose to have weekly, the more money you will make.

Again, as a tutor you need to prepare merely once. After you teach the tutorial class, you don't need to reteach the same lesson. You can then prepare a follow-up lesson based on what learners didn't know as opposed to reteaching concepts that all learners in the group grasped well.

What to Consider When Teaching a Group?

You may be wondering how you can go about teaching a small group? Well, it is quite easy to do so, especially if you do some prep work first.

The key rules to being a good tutor is to be prepared and well-organized.  Preparing a lesson before you give it is one of the best possible strategies for all newcomer tutors. You must decide whether you are going to conduct one hour tutorial lessons or two-hour lessons.  Irrespective of whether you will be conducting one-hour lessons or two-hour lessons, you need to have a list of worksheets prepared to keep the students busy after your explanation.

Preparation changes a bad lesson into a good one. You must always remember to devote part of your lesson to teaching theory as well as spend the rest of your lesson giving students time to practice what has been learnt. You also need to be prepared to answer any question that your students may ask. You may want to do more research on topics covered in social science like Jan van Riebeek or plateaus if you are teaching this subject.

Again, you need to remember that as a tutor you are the person who bridges the gap that learners are experiencing. Sometimes students are taking tutorial lessons particularly because they do not understand the subject content. Your job is to break the content up into digestible chunks so that learners in your tuition class can understand the content better.

If you are teaching a subject such as mathematics, you need to be able to make abstract concepts easier to understand. A good idea would be to invest in concrete objects that you can use to make certain mathematical concepts easier. Fractions can be taught using wooden pizza slices for example. You want to make math lessons easier for kids to understand but fun as well. Fun will separate your tutorial lessons from the lessons that children get at school.

Making lessons fun and engaging is always an excellent idea. With fun and engaging lessons, you also need to make sure that learners are grasping what you have taught them. Giving informal assessments regularly will also keep you up to date with all that learners have understood or not understood from your tutorial lessons.

Here are some ideas of places to teach group lessons.

Teaching Groups in Different Places

If you think about it, "Children learn as they play. Most importantly in play children learn how to learn." O Fred Donaldson

If you think about it, you don't have to have tutorials lessons that are as structured in the same way as the lessons taught at school. You can teach students anywhere.

If you are a group tutor and your house is not big enough to accommodate your students, you can choose to take your learners to another venue in order to teach them. If you are teaching fitness or some type of sport, you can always choose to teach in the park.

While you may think that every single lesson has to taught in a classroom, you are wrong there. Teaching a foreign language like Italian to a group of students will also be best taught at an Italian restaurant of choice.

A music tutorial class can be taught in a hall. A library may be the best place to teach reading. Sometimes it could just be the place where you are conducting small group tutorial lessons that helps learners to learn better.

Considering Payment with Small Group Teaching

If you are considering teaching small groups, you must contemplate how much you could charge per student per lesson.

Again, if you are starting out as a tutor, you need to think carefully about your rate and set a more reasonable rate. Once you gain more experience as a tutor, you need to consider the market rate for tutors like yourself and charge accordingly. You don't want to sell yourself short for the amount of effort that you will put into your group tutorial lessons. For group lessons in South Africa, you can charge anything from R85 or more per student.

When setting your tutorial rate, keep in mind that the number of tutors is increasing every day. You need to charge a reasonable rate initially if you want to attract parents to enrol their children for tuition with you.

You can surely entice parents to choose you as a tutor by being forthcoming with regards to your:

• Qualifications
• Experience
• Teaching style
• Reasonable fee

Again, you need to make sure that the rate you charge for your tutorial lessons still enables you to make a decent living. Many teachers choose to tutor as a side hustle so as to be able to save money for luxuries like holidays or just to have more money to spend on entertainment.

The more students you devote your time and effort to, the more you can expect to earn at the end of the month. You have so many options available to you as a tutor. You can even resort to tutoring online. If parents want you to reduce your price slightly, you can offer these parents online tutorial classes for their children. In this way, you save on traveling expenses as well.

If you are keen on tutoring, keep in mind, "Tutors don't just give out answers. They want students to understand how to do the work on their own." Ashley Brown

Do you have any other advice for aspiring tutors? Feel free to comment and share this advice.