How Tutoring Works: Six Steps to Grow Motivation and Accelerate Student Learning
About this ebook
Tutoring is much more than telling students information. Effective tutoring begins with the strong and caring relationship a tutor establishes with a learner to build trust, fuel motivation, and drive critical learning.
How Tutoring Works distills the complexity of strategic moves effective tutors make to build students’ confidence and competence. Harnessing decades of Visible Learning® research, this easy to read, eye-opening guide details the six essential components of any effective tutoring intervention—establishing a relationship and credibility, addressing student confidence and challenges, setting shared goals, helping a student learn how to learn, teaching and learning content, and establishing a habit of deliberate practice. Indispensable for any educator who intervenes with students, this rich resource includes:
- Examples of impactful tutoring conversations, including what to say and what not to say when building a relationship with a learner.
- Specific approaches to use when establishing credibility, addressing challenges to learning, leveraging the relevance of knowledge, setting goals, and ensuring practice.
- Learning strategies, with effect size, for teaching and learning content, including specific strategies for improving reading, writing, and mathematics.
- Tips and tools for helping students develop powerful cognitive, metacognitive, and affective study skills.
- Resources and advice for establishing an effective and transformational tutoring program.
Done well, tutoring can repair a student’s damaged relationship to learning, address unrealized potential, and alter the course of a young person’s life. A strong and nurturing relationship between tutor and learner is key.
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About the author
Nancy Frey is professor of educational leadership at San Diego State University and a leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. Previously, Nancy was a teacher, academic coach, and central office resource coordinator in Florida. She is a credentialed special educator, reading specialist, and administrator in California. She is a member of the International Literacy Association’s Literacy Research Panel. She has published widely on literacy, quality instruction, and assessment, as well as books such as The Artificial Intelligences Playbook, How Scaffolding Works, How Teams Work, and The Vocabulary Playbook.
Douglas Fisher is professor and chair of educational leadership at San Diego State University and a leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. Previously, Doug was an early intervention teacher and elementary school educator. He is a credentialed teacher and leader in California. In 2022, he was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame by the Literacy Research Association. He has published widely on literacy, quality instruction, and assessment, as well as books such as Welcome to Teaching, PLC+, Teaching Students to Drive their Learning, and Student Assessment: Better Evidence, Better Decisions, Better Learning.
Dr. John Almarode is a bestselling author and an Associate Professor of Education at James Madison University. He was awarded the inaugural Sarah Miller Luck Endowed Professorship in 2015 and received an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia in 2021. Before his academic career, John started as a mathematics and science teacher in Augusta County, Virginia. As an author, John has written multiple educational books focusing on science and mathematics, and he has co-created a new framework for developing, implementing, and sustaining professional learning communities called PLC+. Dr. Almarode′s work has been presented to the US Congress, the Virginia Senate, and the US Department of Education. John and his colleagues have also focused a lot of attention on the process of implementation – taking evidence-based practices and moving them from intention to implementation, potential to impact through a series of on-your-feet-guides around PLCs, Visible Learning, Visible Teaching, and the SOLO Taxonomy.
