The mock tutoring session greatly helped me feel more comfortable with going into student meetings. Since I begin working with the students next week, this was perfect timing. Maddie (Maddy?) did well with having short notice with my essay, and was still able to provide helpful feedback and suggestions to my areas of concern. Through her questioning, we were able to work on specifics and identify the essay’s needs. Asking for the student to point out areas they want the tutor to look at and having them restate the prompt helps the tutor and tutee keep a focus. I liked the example for practicing summary with an exterior source like Titanic, as it gets their brains going but with a more engaging topic. Going into sessions, I need to remember to ease into it with breaking the ice and being careful to not jump into the work aspect too quickly. Much of what we have read from the book is going to be useful with providing the student strategies and the tutor with techniques to teach the student how to help themselves in the revision process. Overall, seeing a mock session play out, and be somewhat part of, was beneficial with easing my concerns going forward with meetings this coming week.
Conducting the mock-tutoring session on Wednesday was an eye-opening experience, and gave me much insight into what meeting with a student to discuss their paper would be like. I took the role of the tutor; partially because nobody else was volunteering themselves for the role, but also because I really felt like I needed a taste of first-hand experience with tutoring before jumping into it with my tutees this week. This gave me many important things to think about prior to my first meeting.
For the mock-tutoring session, I was tutoring the “student” based on work I was not familiar with, as well as an assignment and a prompt I was unaware of. That really demonstrated how useful it is to go into the tutoring session having read and reviewed the students piece ahead of time, as well as being fully aware of what their professor expects of them. Having attended Professor Stiegler-Balfour’s class twice now, it is very clear to me what she expects for their first assignment of completing a solid introduction draft for their research paper. Attending these classes will help me to know whether the student’s are hitting all their marks when I am evaluating their writing. At the end of the day, I am not the one grading their papers, so it is important for me to know how to help them produce the work that their professor is going to accept. Professor Stiegler-Balfour gave me an assignment sheet for the writing project, so the expectations are very clear, and it is my job to help guide the students toward reaching those expectations. If I had a clearer understanding of the assignment I was evaluating, I might have had better and more helpful feedback for Sarah on Wednesday. Having read her work prior also would have made a big difference as to what about her work I might have had suggestions for changing or improving. In light of this, I asked my tutees to please send me a copy of their working draft prior to their tutoring appointments with me, so that I could be better prepared to help them and make suggestions.
There were many strategies I used in the mock-tutoring session that I think I would take into the upcoming tutoring sessions I have with students this week. For one thing, I would definitely use language and ask questions to make the students feel more comfortable in the session, and understand that I am their peer just as much as their tutor. I want to be intentional about learning more about them so that I can utilize that information when I am helping them- such as their major and their year. The questions I pose are also very important. I think that some of the questions I used in the mock-tutoring, such as “what do you think the strengths and weaknesses of your work are right now?” and “can you point me to an area of your writing that you want to work on?”. I think these are good questions because they can help the student to think critically about their writing, and how to assess it for themselves. I am looking forward to meeting with students this week and putting what I have learned into action.
2 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 4”
The mock tutoring session greatly helped me feel more comfortable with going into student meetings. Since I begin working with the students next week, this was perfect timing. Maddie (Maddy?) did well with having short notice with my essay, and was still able to provide helpful feedback and suggestions to my areas of concern. Through her questioning, we were able to work on specifics and identify the essay’s needs. Asking for the student to point out areas they want the tutor to look at and having them restate the prompt helps the tutor and tutee keep a focus. I liked the example for practicing summary with an exterior source like Titanic, as it gets their brains going but with a more engaging topic. Going into sessions, I need to remember to ease into it with breaking the ice and being careful to not jump into the work aspect too quickly. Much of what we have read from the book is going to be useful with providing the student strategies and the tutor with techniques to teach the student how to help themselves in the revision process. Overall, seeing a mock session play out, and be somewhat part of, was beneficial with easing my concerns going forward with meetings this coming week.
Conducting the mock-tutoring session on Wednesday was an eye-opening experience, and gave me much insight into what meeting with a student to discuss their paper would be like. I took the role of the tutor; partially because nobody else was volunteering themselves for the role, but also because I really felt like I needed a taste of first-hand experience with tutoring before jumping into it with my tutees this week. This gave me many important things to think about prior to my first meeting.
For the mock-tutoring session, I was tutoring the “student” based on work I was not familiar with, as well as an assignment and a prompt I was unaware of. That really demonstrated how useful it is to go into the tutoring session having read and reviewed the students piece ahead of time, as well as being fully aware of what their professor expects of them. Having attended Professor Stiegler-Balfour’s class twice now, it is very clear to me what she expects for their first assignment of completing a solid introduction draft for their research paper. Attending these classes will help me to know whether the student’s are hitting all their marks when I am evaluating their writing. At the end of the day, I am not the one grading their papers, so it is important for me to know how to help them produce the work that their professor is going to accept. Professor Stiegler-Balfour gave me an assignment sheet for the writing project, so the expectations are very clear, and it is my job to help guide the students toward reaching those expectations. If I had a clearer understanding of the assignment I was evaluating, I might have had better and more helpful feedback for Sarah on Wednesday. Having read her work prior also would have made a big difference as to what about her work I might have had suggestions for changing or improving. In light of this, I asked my tutees to please send me a copy of their working draft prior to their tutoring appointments with me, so that I could be better prepared to help them and make suggestions.
There were many strategies I used in the mock-tutoring session that I think I would take into the upcoming tutoring sessions I have with students this week. For one thing, I would definitely use language and ask questions to make the students feel more comfortable in the session, and understand that I am their peer just as much as their tutor. I want to be intentional about learning more about them so that I can utilize that information when I am helping them- such as their major and their year. The questions I pose are also very important. I think that some of the questions I used in the mock-tutoring, such as “what do you think the strengths and weaknesses of your work are right now?” and “can you point me to an area of your writing that you want to work on?”. I think these are good questions because they can help the student to think critically about their writing, and how to assess it for themselves. I am looking forward to meeting with students this week and putting what I have learned into action.