How Tutoring Works

Build students’ confidence and competence with tutoring strategies that spark meaningful, accelerated learning. Tutoring is much more than telling students information. Effective tutoring begins with the strong and caring relationship a tutor establishes with a learner to build trust, fuel motivation, and drive critical learning. How Tutoring Works distills the complexity of strategic moves effective tutors make to build students’ confidence and competence. Harnessing decades of Visible Learning® research, this easy to read, eye-opening guide details the six essential components of any effective tutoring intervention—establishing a relationship and credibility, addressing student confidence and challenges, setting shared goals, helping a student learn how to learn, teaching and learning content, and establishing a habit of deliberate practice. Indispensable for any educator who intervenes with students, this rich resource includes: Examples of impactful tutoring conversations, including what to say and what not to say when building a relationship with a learner. Specific approaches to use when establishing credibility, addressing challenges to learning, leveraging the relevance of knowledge, setting goals, and ensuring practice. Learning strategies, with effect size, for teaching and learning content, including specific strategies for improving reading, writing, and mathematics. Tips and tools for helping students develop powerful cognitive, metacognitive, and affective study skills. Resources and advice for establishing an effective and transformational tutoring program. Done well, tutoring can repair a student’s damaged relationship to learning, address unrealized potential, and alter the course of a young person’s life. A strong and nurturing relationship between tutor and learner is key.

With this wide-ranging volume, literacy leaders, practitioners, and scholars will gain much-needed information about high-quality, evidence-based extended learning programs. Contributors present principles for designing effective tutoring programs in school, after school, and during the summer. They outline their programs and supply evidence that their tutoring initiatives benefit students literacy development. Most important, the authors clearly explain their work so that their tutoring programs and research can be replicated.

Translate the science of learning into strategies for maximum learning impact in your classroom. The content, skills, and understandings students need to learn today are as diverse, complex, and multidimensional as the students in our classrooms. How can educators best create the learning experiences students need to truly learn? How Learning Works: A Playbook unpacks the science of how students learn and translates that knowledge into promising principles or practices that can be implemented in the classroom or utilized by students on their own learning journey. Designed to help educators create learning experiences that better align with how learning works, each module in this playbook is grounded in research and features prompts, tools, practice exercises, and discussion strategies that help teachers to Describe what is meant by learning in the local context of your classroom, including identifying any barriers to learning. Adapt promising principles and practices to meet the specific needs of your students—particularly regarding motivation, attention, encoding, retrieval and practice, cognitive load and memory, productive struggle, and feedback. Translate research on learning into learning strategies that accelerate learning and build students’ capacity to take ownership of their own learning—such as summarizing, spaced practice, interleaved practice, elaborate interrogation, and transfer strategies. Generate and gather evidence of impact by engaging students in reciprocal teaching and effective feedback on learning. Rich with resources that support the process of parlaying scientific findings into classroom practice, this playbook offers all the moves teachers need to design learning experiences that work for all students!

Praise for How Learning Works "How Learning Works is the perfect title for this excellent book. Drawing upon new research in psychology, education, and cognitive science, the authors have demystified a complex topic into clear explanations of seven powerful learning principles. Full of great ideas and practical suggestions, all based on solid research evidence, this book is essential reading for instructors at all levels who wish to improve their students' learning." —Barbara Gross Davis, assistant vice chancellor for educational development, University of California, Berkeley, and author, Tools for Teaching "This book is a must-read for every instructor, new or experienced. Although I have been teaching for almost thirty years, as I read this book I found myself resonating with many of its ideas, and I discovered new ways of thinking about teaching." —Eugenia T. Paulus, professor of chemistry, North Hennepin Community College, and 2008 U.S. Community Colleges Professor of the Year from The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education "Thank you Carnegie Mellon for making accessible what has previously been inaccessible to those of us who are not learning scientists. Your focus on the essence of learning combined with concrete examples of the daily challenges of teaching and clear tactical strategies for faculty to consider is a welcome work. I will recommend this book to all my colleagues." —Catherine M. Casserly, senior partner, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching "As you read about each of the seven basic learning principles in this book, you will find advice that is grounded in learning theory, based on research evidence, relevant to college teaching, and easy to understand. The authors have extensive knowledge and experience in applying the science of learning to college teaching, and they graciously share it with you in this organized and readable book." —From the Foreword by Richard E. Mayer, professor of psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara; coauthor, e-Learning and the Science of Instruction; and author, Multimedia Learning

Tutoring today is a $4 billion industry (yes—billion) with companies like Sylvan Learning Center and Kaplan Tutoring cashing in. So, what are parents of today’s overextended students to do? Top professional tutor Marina Koestler Ruben empowers you to take a do-it-yourself approach to your child’s after-school enrichment. As a parent-tutor, you will learn how provide holistic academic support for your children and create an intellectual environment in the home—strengthening your relationship and improving parent-child communication in the process. Ruben’s accessible guide shows you how to balance big-picture curiosity with the academic nitty-gritties of homework assignments, organization, and electronic resources. Building on her proven “Six-Step Session” format, Ruben shares the secrets to tutoring children in any subject from kindergarten through high school—all with a warm, entertaining tone that will inspire you to inspire them.

In the best science classrooms, teachers see learning through the eyes of their students, and students view themselves as explorers. But with so many instructional approaches to choose from—inquiry, laboratory, project-based learning, discovery learning—which is most effective for student success? In Visible Learning for Science, the authors reveal that it’s not which strategy, but when, and plot a vital K-12 framework for choosing the right approach at the right time, depending on where students are within the three phases of learning: surface, deep, and transfer. Synthesizing state-of-the-art science instruction and assessment with over fifteen years of John Hattie’s cornerstone educational research, this framework for maximum learning spans the range of topics in the life and physical sciences. Employing classroom examples from all grade levels, the authors empower teachers to plan, develop, and implement high-impact instruction for each phase of the learning cycle: Surface learning: when, through precise approaches, students explore science concepts and skills that give way to a deeper exploration of scientific inquiry. Deep learning: when students engage with data and evidence to uncover relationships between concepts—students think metacognitively, and use knowledge to plan, investigate, and articulate generalizations about scientific connections. Transfer learning: when students apply knowledge of scientific principles, processes, and relationships to novel contexts, and are able to discern and innovate to solve complex problems. Visible Learning for Science opens the door to maximum-impact science teaching, so that students demonstrate more than a year’s worth of learning for a year spent in school.

You can save $3.74 if you use Discount/Coupon Code: SGYP38JT at Checkout. You pay only $ 21.21 for the great How To Tutor!! Hurry! How To Tutor, by famed writer Samuel L. Blumenfeld, first available 38 years ago has without change, continued to be an outstanding resource to teach the Three R's. It has not changed because it works so well. Its methodology is timeless!! It is a whole school in one book for only $ 29.95. Its three parts are (1) Sam Blumenfeld's amazingly easy to teach systematic, intensive phonics READING instruction program. (2) His effective CURSIVE HANDWRITING program and (3) his equally effective ARITHMETIC PROGRAM. Has been used by 100,000's parents, teachers and tutors. Mary Pride, leading homeschooling materials reviewer, calls it a best value. 298 pages. How To Tutor works at ALL ages. Anyone who can read can teach the 3 R's with it. WHY IS HOW TO TUTOR IMPORTANT? Dr. Blumenfeld warns: Most parents wait until their child is having difficulty at school before they think of providing remediation. Sometimes the child is so far behind, so confused, so frustrated by not learning in the first two grades, that the remedial program looks long and difficult. However, proper tutoring at the preschool level or in the first two grades, as a preventive measure, can make sure that the child has the foundation on which to build achievement. How To Tutor provides parents and teachers with a complete instructional program: step-by-step lesson plans in the Three R's. It originally was to help public school students. Since then the continued decline in many public schools made HOMESCHOOLING much more important. Homeschool families discovered what a gem this book is for them. HERE ARE THE THREE SECTIONS: PART (1) READING: The big problem in schooling today. How To Tutor shows how to avoid the confusion in teaching reading that prevails in our schools today. 117 complete lessons. Contains everything you need to teach your student to be a top reader. You learn the dirty little secret professional educators keep from you: It is really EASY TO TEACH READING! There are only 44 sounds (Phonograms) you need to teach your student to build a high level of reading skill. PART (2) CURSIVE HANDWRITING: Many Parents and Grandparents today are often shocked to learn that in many schools cursive is not taught. With How To Tutor you are given all the tools you need to teach this important skill with ease. Here is another little secret: Cursive can be taught BEFORE printing (ball & stick). There are only THREE basic strokes involved in cursive handwriting. Most children can learn these at a surprisingly early age. Learning about this will amaze you. 73 complete lessons. PART (3) ARITHMETIC: Quoting Dr. Blumenfeld: In teaching arithmetic it is important to convey the genius of the system itself. Next to the alphabet, it is the greatest mental tool ever devised by man. We should approach the subject with the excitement it deserves. Any teacher who makes arithmetic dull does so because he does not understand its beautiful simplicity, logic and facility which permit us to do so much with so little. HTT Arithmetic covers addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, weights, time, and the calendar. Everything up to just before geometry and algebra. All this in 67 easy lessons. FINAL WORD: Anyone can use these lesson plans: Students, Parents, Teachers, Tutors, Retired Teachers, Housewives and Grandparents. Tutoring can be a good way to earn extra money while aiding people who need help to improve their reading, handwriting and arithmetic ability. Some of the claims we make may appear unbelievable. They are TRUE. We have heard from countless users who cannot say enough about HTT's simplicity and effectiveness. See for yourself. Money back guarantee. HTT also available at Amazon in: How To Tutor eBook - CD ROM version (ISBN 9780941995474- $ 17.95).

One-on-One Tutoring by Humans and Computers articulates the CIRCSIM-Tutor project, an attempt to develop a computer tutor that generates a natural language dialogue with a student. Editors Martha Evens and Joel Michael present the educational context within which the project was launched, as well as research into tutoring, the process of implementation of CIRCSIM-Tutor, and the results of using CIRCSIM-Tutor in the classroom. The domain of this project is cardiovascular physiology, specifically targeting first-year medical students, though the idea is applicable to the development of intelligent tutoring systems across populations, disciplines, and domains. This 5 year-long project was motivated by the belief that students need assistance in building appropriate mental models of complex physiological phenomena, as well as practice in expressing these ideas in their own words to fully develop those models, and experience in problem-solving to use those models effectively. The book outlines directions for future research, and includes distinct features such as: *detailed studies of human one-on-one tutoring; *learning outcomes resulting from use of the tutor; *natural language input parsed and translated into logical form; and *natural language output generated using the LFG paradigm. This volume will appeal to educators who want to improve human tutoring or use computer tutors in the classroom, and it will interest computer scientists who want to build those computer tutors, as well as anyone who believes that language is central to teaching and learning.