Planning: Choose a focal point

When planning a lesson, try to focus on one aspect you want to teach that your student will remember. Once you have your focus, you can build on it and include related activities, readings, conversation topics, etc. It is important that your lesson has direction. Every time you plan an activity with your student, ask yourself: What is the aim of this activity? What do I want to accomplish by using it in my lesson with that particular student.

It may sound very rigid, but having a plan built around one aspect, does not mean you will have to strictly enforce it during the lesson. As you know one to one tutoring means that the tutor can accommodate the student’s needs and is flexible enough to change the initial planned activities. Your focal point though stays the same. In other words, keep your focus but leave activities and methodology open to change. For example, imagine your focal point is emphasizing on present simple tense and you have decided already that you will talk about your student’s regular activities on Saturday and you plan to have a light conversation where you can listen for mistakes using this tense. You have your entire plan and you even have pre-planned questions to ask your student. You meet your student and she tells you that she read a very interesting article on planting trees for reforestation which is one of her biggest interests. She says she does not entirely understand the article and she needs some help from you. What would your reaction be?

1. No panic :)
2. Assess the situation: your student’s needs are first priority for you
3. Come up with several solutions to accommodate her needs and at the same time incorporate your focal point into the new situation
4. Explain to the student what your plan is and what the focus of the lesson will be
5. Let her verbally summarize the article she read
6. Ask her to show you the difficult parts of the article she could not understand
7. Work together to make her get a clearer understanding of the article by pointing out examples of Present Simple tense and ask her to speak more about the article using this tense
This is just an example of what you can do in a situation of change. Planning is definitely crucial because it will show your student that you have determination to make their learning better. It will also reveal your attention to the student’s “weak” language points. The student will have more respect towards you because they will see that you put effort into planing their learning and make it accessible for them.