How to Plan a 45-Minute Tutoring Session

How to Plan Your First Tutoring Session

The first session can be the hardest to plan because you’re not yet sure what level the student is working at or what topics they struggle with! To help with this, I always try to ask the parent/carer what they’d like for me to start with or if there is anything their child is currently working towards that I can help with (such as a class test). This can be a great starting point for you to plan the content for your first session.

Unfortunately, I’ve found that a lot of the time, parents and children are simply not sure what they want to cover or there isn’t anything on the top of their minds. In these cases, you can simply offer to prepare a ‘mixed topic intro/diagnostic’ which is just a way of identifying what level they’re working at during your first session. I’d rather have ten questions prepared and only use six, than run out of work five minutes before the session ends.

A diagnostic doesn’t have to be a formal test. I usually prefer to make it feel like a normal tutoring session, with a mixture of questions that gradually increase in difficulty. Then, I’ll still support them through the questions

For example, a student might get a question wrong because they’ve forgotten a particular formula, but they might understand exactly what the question is asking. Another student might know all the content but struggle to apply it to an unfamiliar question.

These are two very different problems, and they would require very different future sessions. The first session is therefore less about trying to teach absolutely everything and more about working out where to go next.

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4 Types of Tutoring Session and How to Prepare for Each

Not every student needs the same type of tutoring, so the amount of lesson planning for a tutoring session you need to do can vary quite a lot.

1. No prep needed

This is often for students who mainly need help with school homework or have their own revision materials to work through. You don’t necessarily need to prepare a full lesson beforehand, but it’s still worth checking what they’re likely to bring so you can refresh your own knowledge if needed.

Sometimes, I do like to accompany these sessions with a few of my own questions to make sure that the student understands the topic and isn’t just following my steps to answer their work and move on.

2. You bring the work + guide

Here, you’re responsible for preparing the content (having been told the exam board and subject in advance), you’ll be curating questions and activities for the student throughout the session.

I’d usually prepare enough questions or activities to fill the session, alongside some notes to accompany the questions if they’re not sure on a particular one. This does require more preparation, especially if you’re creating your own resources.

3. Teaching from scratch

This is more common when parents want their child to read ahead of their class or be taught outside of school. These sessions need the most preparation because you’re responsible for deciding what to teach, creating or finding resources and making sure the content is at the right level.

I’d also plan what you want to cover across several sessions rather than treating each lesson separately, which stops me from trying to squeeze entire modules into 45 minutes!

4. Exam preparation

If a student is preparing for an upcoming exam, your planning will usually be more focused. Find out their exam board, what they’re being assessed on and when their exam is, then work backwards to decide what needs to be covered. You might spend some sessions teaching weaker topics and others doing past-paper questions or exam technique.

MY TOP TIPS

1. Give yourself a clear goal

Once I know what the student needs, I like to have a clear objective for the session. This doesn’t have to be anything complicated. It could simply be: “By the end of the session, I want them to be able to answer questions on X independently.”

Having an objective helps me decide what resources I need. If my objective is for a student to understand how to calculate percentages, I know I need to explain the method, work through some examples and then give them questions to complete independently.

It also stops me from trying to cover too much. It can be tempting, especially when you’re new to tutoring, to fill a session with as much content as possible. Often, while I’m in the middle of teaching one topic, I realise there are multiple others that are ‘very closely linked’ to this one and I want to have a quick tangent to that, but I’ve learnt that that’s counter-productive to try and squeeze multiple mini topics into one. Instead, simply jot them down for your future reference - maybe even propose that as the topic for next session when you wrap up this one! But, if the student leaves the session understanding one topic really well, that is much more useful than rushing through five topics that they only half understand.

2. Know your content well

One of my favourite things about tutoring is that it makes you think about topics from multiple perspectives. Occasionally, students ask questions that are much more complicated than what’s on the syllabus!

That’s why I think it’s important to know your content really well. You need to be able to answer questions from different angles and apply your knowledge to the scenarios your students come up with, rather than just knowing the standard textbook answer. Sometimes, your planning for the session may simply be to brush up on a physics topic that you’re not a 100% confident on so you can explain it to your student clearly and without any confusion.

But don’t be afraid to admit when you’re not sure about something. It’s much better to say “I’m not sure, let’s work it out together” than make up an answer. It can actually turn into an insightful discussion that the student will remember for longer than a piece of information they had to memorise.

3. Work together with the student

As a tutor, your role isn’t just to teach the content you’ve prepared. You’re there to work with the student and figure out what they need help with.

For example, if they bring a piece of homework they’re stuck on, spend time going through this first, instead of your planned activity, which is absolutely fine! I also like asking at the start of each session if there’s anything they’ve found difficult at school that week because it gives you a chance to pick up on any questions that pop up in their minds!

Your plan is only there to give you direction, but don’t be afraid to change it if the student needs something else that day.

4. Recycle your Notes

This takes a little while to have enough resources, but when you’ve come to a point where you have multiple students doing the same subject, you can simply make one set of slides and homework which you can then share. For example, I had 3 students to whom I was teaching English Language AQA GCSE, so it was only right that I used the same slides and teaching objectives for them. Over time, this can become a resource bank you create for yourself, saving more time for own revision or activities

However, you might use the same GCSE Biology slides with two students but spend 20 minutes on one topic with one student and 5 minutes with another depending on their understanding – so it’s all up to your adaptability!

Structure of a 45 minute tutoring session.

This is only a rough structure. I don’t treat it as a timetable that has to be followed exactly. If the student understands the topic quickly, I can move onto harder questions. If they’re struggling, I can spend longer explaining it or approach it in a different way.

The point of planning is to make sure I have a direction and that I have enough content to keep them occupied for the whole time.

Here’s a rough plan that works with my students:

Remember: this is a guide, not a timetable. If your student understands something quickly, move on. If they're struggling, spend longer explaining it or try a different approach.

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Setting Homework:

This is optional, but it’s something that I find really builds trust amidst parents and is a great way for the student to consolidate their knowledge during the break. You may be familiar with the forgetting curve from your own studies, and homework is a way we work against that - so the students are revisiting the important topics ahead of next class so there is less need for you to repeat yourselves entirely.

To decide if you set homework, ask the student how they feel about their current workload from school about if they think they are okay with extra homework or committing to weekly work!

Free tutoring resources I use

• Oak National Academy – have ready-made slides that are exam board focused!
• Exam board past papers – AQA, Edexcel, OCR and other exam boards have past papers, mark schemes and examiner reports available for free. These are especially useful for GCSE and A-level students.
• Maths Genie – one of my go-to resources for GCSE Maths, with topic questions
• BBC Bitesize – useful for quick explanations, revision and topic summaries, particularly for GCSE students.
• Cognito – useful for GCSE Biology, Chemistry and Physics, with videos and practice questions.
• Physics & Maths Tutor (PMT) – great for finding topic questions, past papers and revision resources for GCSE and A-level subjects.
• Seneca Learning – useful for students who like more interactive revision and can be given sections to complete between sessions.

For hosting your online sessions:

• MyPocketSkill’s MeetMe – you can use this to run your tutoring sessions directly through the platform without needing another video-calling service.

And for more advice on working with students, see theMyPocketSkill guide to how to tutor.

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