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Assess Your Student
Ascertaining the Entry Behaviour
This article focuses on the importance of assessing your student’s current understanding of a topic, areas in which they are weak, their previous techniques for studying and the ways in which you can adapt your lessons to best suit the needs of your student, based on this information.
You may often hear teachers talking about assessing the “entry behaviour” of students. This is a slight misdemeanour since it’s not the behaviour the teacher is assessing, but the student’s current knowledge and skill set they bring at the start of the course. It’s even more important for a tutor to make this initial assessment, in order to identify the key areas that need to be covered and the areas of knowledge the student already possess. A tutor will often have very limited time, but it’s not necessary to cover all areas of the syllabus: what is important is to know which areas really need to be covered.
Within your first meeting with the student, you need to understand what they hope to achieve in the following lessons. You may know their name, age, and their current grade, but at this stage you have very little information on their current strength, knowledge, needs and coverage of the subject. You should already have a thorough understanding of their syllabus before this meeting, but what you don’t know is how much of this syllabus needs to be-recovered with the student.
What You Should Try To Assess During Your First Meeting
Your first meeting should be used as a two way assessment. Make this first lesson free if you wish. But don’t spend all this time assessing: try to use the minimum amount of time required to thoroughly assess the student, and then spend the rest of the time giving them a sample of the enjoyable, fun-packed lessons to come.
The following is a list of a few things you should try to assess to help structure your future lessons (this is by no means an exclusive list, try to add questions of your own, particularly ones relevant to your subject area).
1. What do they hope to achieve from the subject course, is it to gain entrance to university, do they hope to take this subject further or do they just have a general interest in this subject? It might be that they regret the day they ever chose this subject and just want to get it out the way and never look back. With your enjoyable lessons, hopefully you can warm them to the subject, reduce their fear, and help make the learning process a more positive one.
2. What do they expect from the tuition lessons? Is it exam revision time for them, do they need to cover particular areas of their course more thoroughly than others, do they expect you to go through the entire syllabus with them and if so, is there time?
3. Does the student have circumstances, concentrations problems or learning difficulties which are likely to affect their ability to study? Your Teaching Techniques should differ with these students. Teaching Techniques is a broad area and will be covered in more detail in later articles.
4. What is their current level of confidence? It is possible that your student is a B-A student in this subject, but hopes for an A* to help them gain entrance to a demanding University or course, for example: Medicine. Your approach to teaching this student would be significantly different to teaching a student having difficulty with the subject.
(Always leave the questions on a high note)
5. What is their current level of Motivation? How much do they want to pass this exam? This is an important question, you can almost teach anyone anything if they are willing to learn, but teaching someone who doesn’t want to learn is a mere impossibility. I would consider telling teachers to get out of the race before the whistle is even blown, not only will you be wasting your time but theirs too. As a tutor you want all of your students to succeed to the best of their ability, don’t let yourself down by trying to teach those who do not wish to learn.
Why is this initial assessment important?
Have you ever come away from a lesson and thought “I haven’t learnt one thing that I didn’t already know”, or even worse “I didn’t follow a thing” It’s not just important to make the lesson enjoyable for the student, but it’s the tutors’ job to facilitate the learning process. You can make the lessons enjoyable, but if you haven’t covered the student’s weakest areas, and help them to further understand the subject according to the syllabus, then you haven’t done your job. An alternate view to this is that you can cover the weak areas that the student has and the student can sit an listen quietly, but not recollect a thing from the tuition. Its important to both get the student actively involved in the learning process in an enjoyable manner, and also cover each area they are having difficulty with. It is beneficial to assess each individual , to know where their strengths lie, which areas they will need substantial help with, and how they respond to particular teaching methods: this way, you will be able to facilitate the leaving process and place the odds in yours and your students favour.
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