DC Tutoring adds Peer Tutoring to List of Motivational Techniques for Learning
Articles February 11th, 2010
Besides the classroom teacher, DC tutors rely on parents to help support their child’s learning and educational endeavors. Most tutors attend classes to help them talk with parents so they have a better understanding of what their role is in their child’s learning process. The tutor is a supplement to the teacher and parents who should be their first role models, mentors and coaches besides loving parents.
In addition to teachers and parents, a DC tutoring company might rely on supervised classroom peer tutoring which has gained popularity over the past few years.
Peer tutoring is exactly what it sounds like, one of a child’s peers – a student from their class – tutors them in a subject that the first student is very good at. One example would be math. If one student ‘gets it’ and another student is suffering and doesn’t understand something as well or at all, then the teacher might pair the two to work on several problems. There are certain ages in which peer tutoring is not such a good idea and there are also certain students who might not benefit from peer tutoring – extremely talkative students or those who tend to be bullies and don’t care much for academics would do better with an older tutor.
Peer tutoring builds confidence in both students because they are working together for a common goal. However, peer tutoring should be an addition to regular tutoring and peer tutoring should take place within the classroom during school hours. Although one child may ‘get it’ and the other might not, a dominance style dynamic should not be allowed to form. The child that does not get this particular math problem or science concept might be good at writing paragraphs, so a teacher should have them peer tutor the other in what they are good at. And teachers and tutors know that everyone is good at something.
Peer tutoring could help increase a student’s sense of empowerment when they help another student learn a new concept or they work together to figure out a problem. Peer tutoring could also help each student when it comes to test preparations because not every student studies for a test in the same way.
