34 Suggestions for a Productive Session
- Be ready to take notes throughout the session.
- Most find it very easy to develop rapport with the students. Welcomes and goodbyes are important. How’s everything been going this week? is a general enough question to let students decide what they want to share.
- Make it a conversation–while students will likely look to you as an expert, provide reassurance that you are a writer just like them with writing struggles of your own.
- Ask them what they are working on. You’ll have information from the instructors, but it’s helpful to have students reiterate their assignments. (Additionally, students are sometimes working at a different pace with revisions, etc.)
- Ask them who would like to start and explain what you’d like them to do (see info on reading aloud).
- Explain that, if they are comfortable, you’d like everyone in the session to provide feedback.
- If you are on Zoom, it’s ideal if you can use student names frequently when referencing their comments, etc., to make the conversation easier to follow. This is good practice in any tutoring mode because everyone likes to be acknowledged, and using someone’s name helps with that.
- Reiterate students’ and your feedback. Repetition is effective when things are moving fast.