How to Give Your Students a Consistent Challenge

One of my secrets as a tutor is that I focus on what students get wrong.

I don’t mean that I only talk about what they didn’t do right, or that I make them feel bad about getting a question wrong on their homework, or their quiz or their exam. I just mean that, when I see an incorrect answer on a piece of work they bring me, I write down the question. Then, I place it in my notes for that student.

Later, when I plan out the next lesson for that student, I used those missed questions to write exit tickets for them. After the session where the student gets that exit ticket right, I show them the original problem they got wrong. When the student is able to solve it on their own, they really feel a sense of accomplishment, and they feel like their effort matters.

This technique also helps with parents. I can point to specific things that their child is learning in school, and how my tutorials help that child improve on those things. For example, I used to work with a student who always lost points on his essays for punctuation. Over two weeks, we practiced correcting sentences from his essay draft, so that he could see exactly what he was missing. When he went back and corrected his old draft of the essay, the teacher re-graded it ten points higher; when the boy’s mother found out, she texted me how thankful she was.

You can also use old missed problems to make sure that students keep all their skills up to date, not just their most recent trouble spots. When I’m struggling to make a lesson for a student, I go back to my notes and pull out missed problems from two or three months ago. Then, I tell the student that we’re going to review things they found hard before. Many times, my students are shocked at how easy they find these problems now!

Many tutors already keep notes on their students. Adding the problems that they missed on their homework or tests can make these notes much more useful for planning your sessions, and for building up your students’ skills.