Effective Math Tutoring   by Joe Pagano

People may think that the key to effective math tutoring, or tutoring in any area for that matter, is contingent upon the knowledge that the tutor brings to the table. While knowledge of one's field is certainly important if a tutor is going to be effective, more important is the tutor's ability to relate to your child and give him or her the necessary confidence to succeed in the math subject at hand. During my many years of math tutoring, students would come to know that I knew my field well, but more importantly they came to know that I could relate to them on a deeply personal level. Once this aspect of the tutor-student relationship is established, tutoring becomes markedly more effective.

Whether you are working with the slow learner, fast learner, or in-between learner, you as a math tutor must be able to get inside that student's head and find out what makes him or her tick. You also need to assess whether your particular student is an auditory learner, visual learner, tactile learner, or some mixture of these. It certainly does not hurt to find out the interests of your student and gear your remediation of the troubled subject toward this particular interest. Thus if sports is dear to Johnny, the struggling algebra student, then you should try to center your lessons around sports and interject some sports related problems to the sessions. For example, in remedying Johnny's problems with decimal equations, you might relate decimals to batting averages and percentages such as a pitcher's earned run average (era). In dealing with projectile motion problems, certainly use Johnny's favorite quarterback as the one who throws the football, which is governed by the equation to be solved, in the air.

Techniques such as those mentioned above will not only stimulate interest in the subject but also show the student how such seemingly irrelevant courses in school can actually relate back to the student's world and realms of interest. Remember, you can thoroughly understand both integral and differential calculus, but if you cannot teach your students to navigate in these waters, your knowledge is essentially self-serving. Identify with your tutoring students and watch both them and you grow to become better learners and better teachers. See more on my tutoring here http://www.mathbyjoe.com/private_tutoring.html

About the Author

Joe is a prolific author and former award winning teacher of both college and high school mathematics. His website www.mathbyjoe.com is one of the leading educational sites on the web, providing a place to go to buy his self-help and educational ebooks, and to get information on a broad range of educational topics.