Throughout your tutoring experience, every tutor will without a doubt meet students with a specific character trait that they may absolutely adore or hate. Unfortunately, you would need to arm yourself with sufficient knowledge and experience if you really need to deal with such students in the long run. Take a look at the following list of the different type of students you may encounter:
This particular student would always be behind in his work, be it for classes or tuition work. They will always come up with an excuse for their tardiness and lack of quality in their work, be it from CCAs to other more pressing matters at hand. One of the ways to maximise your time with such students is to get them to practice their work during the tuition sessions instead of leaving them with assignments to do.
In this age where parents are all so “kiasu,” they may enlist the help of tutors even if their child doesn’t need it. This is evident from the stellar examination results from the child and flawless homework that is done during each tuition session. Another common trait you can see is your constant repetition of “Do you have any problems with your work?”, only to receive a rather disappointing reply of “No.” The best way to deal with such kids is to assign them more supplementary questions that are a level more difficult than the standard school curriculum to maximise their potentials.
As the title states, these students are anything but attentive. With an extremely short attention span as well as a super hyperactive composure, they often lose track of what you have to say within a few minutes. They may not necessarily be conceptually weak with their work, but their lack of discipline is most likely their ultimate demise when it comes to studies. To rectify this, try keeping each tuition session short and split them into multiple sessions across the week if possible. Furthermore, you could schedule breaks in between each tuition session so as to allow them to focus more substantially throughout class.
We’ve all seen this kind of kids, be it students or even people we know in classrooms or out. They may or may not be inquisitive in nature, but they definitely do have an opinion about all things even if they have no pre-existing knowledge pertaining to the subject. Often times, they present their opinions as facts and these could lead to a false understanding of their weak subjects especially the sciences. The way to handle these kids is not to shoot them down like tyrants. Instead, take the soft approach and try to add on to their knowledge with facts and get them to attempt more practice questions so they really know what they’re doing.