How To Avoid Making These Common Home Tuition Mistakes

Whenever you are considering additional home tuition study for your child it is always advisable to seek the guidance of a reputable home tuition agency. They can offer advice on planning, how to assess your child’s needs, the most appropriate home tutoring methods to meet those needs. Should you decide to take on the role of your child’s home tutor they can also provide further guidance on how to avoid making these common home tuition mistakes:

Focus On Teaching

Take into account your child’s preferred learning style (see later) and explore different ways by which you can tutor your child. For example using the internet and home PC, hands-on learning, using visual aids, allowing your child to explore the subject on his or her own, interactive learning through discussion rather than one way teaching.

This is probably one of the most common mistakes inexperienced tutors will make. The primary objective of home tuition is for your child to learn and not for you to teach. If you deliver a lesson by “telling” your child and speaking at your child do not be surprised if your child doesn’t retain the new knowledge.

When you focus on learning and not teaching you will come up with your own ideas on how to make the experience more interesting and effective.

Having Low Expectations

We all get what we aim for. Before actually starting to tutor your child, it is extremely important to have developed a plan on how you and your child will work to achieve the outcomes you are looking for. It will be almost impossible to do this unless you have a clear picture of the objectives and expectations you both have of this additional home study.

You do know your own child best and hopefully you will know whether he or she needs help with one specific subject or a number of subjects. Regardless of that try not to have any preconceived ideas as to what the actual outcome may be. Develop your plan to address your child’s weaknesses by aiming high. Aim to stretch him or her otherwise his or her full potential will never be realized. Keep yourself motivated and you child motivated by expecting the best from both of you.

Failing To Incorporate Your Child’s Learning Preferences

This is a common mistake that can have significant adverse effects on the outcome of the learning experience. It may well be that his or her preferred way of learning is not utilized fully in the normal classroom which has led to the need for further home tuition.

Discuss this with your child before commencing actual lessons. Incorporate his or her preferences in to your lesson planning. Moreover, also use this as an opportunity to experiment. Motivate your child to consider new and fresh ways of learning. Some methods may not work for him or her and that’s fine. Unlike normal schooling you have the flexibility to alter the program to suit what works best for you and your child.

Ignoring Classroom Best Practice

One of the many benefits of providing extra home tuition is your child can learn and study in a non-classroom environment. However this does mean that you and your child can be totally relaxed and switched off from good classroom management and learning habits.

It is important to separate the rules and discipline that applies within the home and family unit from those which apply to the classroom or learning environment.

Part of your pre-lesson planning should be to establish and get agreement on the ground rules that will apply throughout the learning period. The rules, the discipline and the routines developed for a school environment are there for a very good reason and that is to maximize the learning time available. Make sure you include your rules as part of the planning process.

Focusing on one subject at a time

This may or may not apply to your situation. If you have introduced additional home tuition to help your child overcome his or her difficulties with one particular subject then this may not apply. But then again it may!

Rather than follow the “text book” method of teaching a subject let’s say math or science try and be more creative. Plan the learning module to include a number of subjects. Incorporate those you know your child excels at using their expertise and knowledge in one to help retain the new knowledge in another for which they may be struggling.

For example if your child learns well by reading or prefers an open interactive discussion about a subject include that in your planning.

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