Awesome Tutoring Session 4/2/14

This by far was the best tutoring observation I've experienced hands down. He faced the conflict of having to work with two students at once. In my opinion he is a perfect tutor example. Instead of me blabbing on let me break down exactly what he did and how he did it.

Greeting:
The greeting was great. He introduced himself to both students and introduced me as well to inform them that I was just observing. He then sat in between both students so that that the transition between the two would be smoother.

Body Language:
I am not sure if the students were able to notice but I noticed that he was a bit nervous. I think that was simply because I was there not only observing him tutor but observing him tutor two students at the same time which is understandable.

Student#1 and Student #2:
He asked the both of them to take out there assignments. S1 did not have his assignment on him at all or anything that was on the paper. He just wanted to know the difference between MLA and APA formatting. S2 had his first draft and was confused by the professors comments and what he should add to his paper. The tutor seeing that S1 has absolutely nothing to work on decided to work on him first and had S2 read over his paper to see if he had any more questions or comments that he probably did not think of before.

Student#1:
Now I am going to explain how he helped this particular student. The tutor got the Works Cited Manual and briefly went over the minor differences. He told the student that worrying about the differences between MLA and APA are minor. He then asked if the student had any concerns particularly about writing that may confuse him. The student then took out a previous assignment he had in that class and asked the tutor what was wrong about the writing. He saw that the professor wrote down comments but he did not understand them. The tutor quickly read it over and discovered that the students main issue was sentence fragments. The tutor told the student that the ideas are awesome but what would make it even better is if he fixed those fragments so that his ideas are made clear. He printed out some handouts that talked about the rules of a proper sentence and the rules of using transition words. He broke each one down and wrote down some of the corrections for the sentences on a sheet of paper. He then asked the student to go through the rest of the assignment and to see if he was able to find sentence fragments on his own while he worked with Student #2.

Student#2:
The tutor thanked this student for being patient and waiting. He asked the student what questions or concerns he had. S2 responded stating that he had issues with sentence structure and more issues with LOC's. The tutor focused on the students LOC's and broke down each error with him just like he did with S1. He printed out a separate handout for this student which focused more on his issues. He gave many examples to the student until he understood. What I really liked particularly about this tutor was that he was very intuitive to the students body language. The student will say he understood but his body language and tone of voice said otherwise. It was awesome that the tutor was able to pick up on that and not give up on explaining the rules until the student actually understood. Even though he focused on grammar and so on he also focused on some HOC's and added sentences to make the students ideas more powerful. He was asking the student what he meant when he wrote a certain paragraph or sentence.

Student#1 and Student#2:
For both students he alternated the work and made sure the other student was always busy doing something so that the student was not simply sitting there waiting. He used collaborative learning and student-centered as his technique which was a nice change from my prior observation experiences. He made it about them but also took over when it was necessary to break things down. One thing he did that I thought tutors were not allowed to do was that he wrote on their actual paper for certain things. That was my only criticism about his session.

Overall:
It was simply amazing. It has been an honor to witness these sessions and take notes on what I should or should not do. In the future I hope to go to this tutor for any help with my papers or if I have any questions about tutoring.