A Plan For Successful Tutoring

After-school tutoring can be a great way to use your teaching skills and strategies to reach students on a different level while earning a little extra income along the way.

Legal Stuff

1. See Your Accountant

We do not offer tax or legal advice so be sure to consult your accountant and/or attorney to make sure that your tutoring business is set up correctly in your state or region before starting out.

Getting Ready

1. Securing a Place

Secure a place where you will conduct your tutoring. I have found the public libraries in my area to be good places to meet with students for tutoring because they offer a quiet area away from major distractions. As a bonus, being at the public library can open up possibilities to you and your student that you may not have known about! 

If tutoring at your school, make sure that you get permission from the administration or board. 

2. Getting the Word Out

Does your school secretary or guidance office keep a list of tutors? Will you leave business cards in prominent places? Will you use social media posts? 

Many clients seem to come by word of mouth and social media recommendations once you get established. 

3. Your First Student

As soon as you have your first student lined up, it's time to prepare. Preparation is the key to a successful tutoring session!

Talk with the student's parent or guardian to set up a time and place for tutoring. Exchange contact information. Talk about expectations, specifically where help is needed, and payment options.  Inform the parent about any materials that the student will need to bring such as homework and school materials. Ask about any allergies. If permitted at the tutoring location, consider having healthy snacks available for the student. Snacks are welcomed by students who are coming straight from school or practice. Finally, ask about the child's interests.

Contact the student's teacher to get some background information about strengths and where he/she needs the most support.

4.  Planning

Overplan! It's better to have too much to do than not enough! 

Plan time for your student to work on any assignment such as homework that the parent or teacher has requested your help with. 

Next, plan games and hands-on activities. These types of resources will keep your student engaged and having fun while learning.

Keep your lessons relatable to your student. For example, if your student is into art and you are working on descriptive writing, consider bringing in a print to discuss and write about. For a student into soccer and working on cause and effect, play a game clip, discuss, and have the student write about the cause and effect in the clip. For a student into the theater and working on ending punctuation, provide part of a script with missing punctuation marks. Have the student read the script and add in the ending punctuation.

Make a list of suggestions for ongoing practice. To maximize the interaction between you and your student, consider saving any online game or activity for last as a possible follow-up suggestion and form of practice. 

5.  Materials

Consider having a designated bag just for tutoring resources. Keep a supply of pencils, erasers, scissors, glue sticks, and colored pencils in your bag. Keep an iPad, Chrome Book, or Laptop in the bag. Add specific materials to the bag for each tutoring session after your plans are done.  Keep a notebook or binder such as these in your tutoring bag.

The Tutoring Session

1. Greeting

Greet the student and spend a minute or two asking how the day or week went. Include both school and after-school activities. If agreed upon and allowed, this would be the time to offer a healthy snack.

2. Five-minute warm-up

This activity should be a review of a previous lesson. Keep it short and simple.

3. Requested Help

Help the student with any assignments that the parent or teacher has requested your help with. Doing this first ensures that you won't run out of time.

4. Games and Activities 

This is the fun part! Break out all the games and activities that you found and prepare to support learning.

5. Closing

Use an exit ticket or another form of assessment to track student learning.

6. Follow up Suggestions

Use the last few minutes to discuss how to practice and apply skills. You may want to include the parent for this part.

7. Next Meeting

Set up the next tutoring session.

Use this freebie to summarize your session!

8. Keeping Records

Add follow-up appointments to your calendar or planner. 

Remember to record financial information as directed by your accountant.

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