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02/16/2021. Tool
Implementation Checklist
Delineate clear responsibilities for tutors based on your Value Proposition and Model Design
Articulate the knowledge, skills, and mindsets necessary for tutors to be effective and successful in their role
Distinguish between what you will select for and what you will train for and have a clear rationale for your choice
Establish clear eligibility criteria based on your value proposition and model design
Design an application process to evaluate eligibility criteria and en
02/16/2021. Tool
Why should you send an introductory statement home to families?
When families know what to expect from a program (and what it expects of them), they are more likely to trust it. When families trust your program, they are more likely to encourage and support their students to meet its expectations and goals. To build trust, you must make a good first impression. Communicate your program’s purpose, design, and logistics in writing, so that both parties can refer back to expectations throughout the duration of the program.
02/16/2021. Tool
Why should teachers and tutors share continual updates?
Teachers and tutors both work better when they work together. To keep the goals and agreements from the kickoff meeting alive throughout the year, consistent communication afterwards is needed. Continual updates help tutors adjust their instruction as new challenges emerge over time, and tutors can provide teachers with updates on students’ progress to help with positive reinforcement in school.
02/16/2021. Tool
Why have a teacher-tutor kickoff meeting?
Teachers and tutors both work better when they work together. Tutors can drastically increase both the actual and perceived effectiveness of their tutoring sessions by building a dynamic relationship with their students’ teachers. To launch this partnership, an initial kickoff meeting helps set the stage for the rest of the year. This meeting should happen before the school year starts, so that teachers can make planning adjustments with the tutoring program in mind and tutors can start strong with students on the first day.
02/16/2021. Tool
Why have a tutoring program-school kickoff meeting?
Particularly if your Setting is In-School, proactive coordination with school administrators is necessary to make tutoring sessions feel like a part of the school day rather than a separate entity. To facilitate this collaboration, your tutoring program must work with the entire school so that staff members inside the building — from school principals to maintenance staff — have aligned their goals, expectations, and logistics.
02/16/2021. Tool
Implementation Checklist
Identify stakeholder groups based on tutoring program design.
02/16/2021. Tool
Why match tutors with students intentionally?
If your program’s Tutor Consistency is Consistent, then each student’s experience of tutoring sessions will be shaped by the individual personality and instructional style of their tutor. Thoughtful and intentional pairings significantly increase the odds that a student will feel engaged with their sessions and supported by their tutor. A good student-tutor match helps students build strong relationships with their tutors and find motivation to reach their learning goals.
02/16/2021. Tool
What is a Growth Mindset?
A Growth Mindset is the understanding that your skills and intelligence can be developed and improved through practice. This is in contrast to a Fixed Mindset, which is the belief that your qualities are fixed, innate, and cannot be improved. These concepts were originally codified by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck in her book Mindset.
02/16/2021. Tool
Why make learning culturally relevant?
When students can make connections between what they learn in tutoring and their culture, language, or life experiences, they can better access key ideas, develop higher-level understanding, and see the value of their learning in their daily lives.
02/16/2021. Tool
Why incorporate routine relationship-building activities into tutoring?
Strong relationships are fundamental to students' success with tutoring. The more students feel safe, supported, and that they have a personal connection with their tutor, the more impactful the sessions will be. At the outset, relationship-building activities help tutors get to know their students and create a safe, positive learning environment. Building them into routine tutoring sessions helps tutors keep their knowledge of students alive and current.
02/16/2021. Tool
Why does building relationships with students matter?
We learn best from people who care about us. Students who feel a connection with their tutor are more likely to engage in learning, ask questions, build motivation, and achieve better academic outcomes. Strong tutor-student relationships built on a foundation of shared understanding and trust create the conditions for all students to take the risks necessary to make dramatic academic gains.
02/16/2021. Tool
Implementation Checklist
Tutors take an asset based approach and are motivating in all interactions with students.
Tutors reinforce a growth mindset whenever students struggle or make mistakes.
If Tutor Consistency is Consistent: Tutors are matched to students using intentional and systematic methods.
If Tutor Consistency is Consistent: Tutors get to know their student using specific strategies and activities.
If Tutor Consistency is Inconsistent: The program uses centralized met
02/16/2021. Tool
What is a Virtual Tutoring Platform?
A virtual tutoring platform is an online conferencing system that facilitates virtual tutoring.
02/16/2021. Tool
Why does small-group facilitation matter?
If your Student-Tutor Ratio is Small Groups instead of one-to-one, your tutors will need skills to establish group norms and manage behavior during sessions. In addition to the facilitation moves listed in the Facilitation Moves Checklist, small-group facilitation requires additional planning and tools to foster a positive, productive learning environment for a group.
02/16/2021. Tool
Why does facilitation matter?
Facilitation is what keeps a student engaged and on-task throughout a tutoring session. Effective facilitation requires thorough planning: not just around what concepts and skills to work on, but also around the routines, directions, and logistics of the tutoring session itself. Time the tutor spends thinking these things through ahead of time maximizes the time the student spends actually learning during the session, rather than getting situated or resolving confusions.
02/16/2021. Tool
Implementation Checklist
Tutors reinforce the academic language and procedures of the classroom and hold students accountable for doing the same.
Tutors appropriately use open-ended questioning to ensure students are articulating their understanding of the content.
Tutors facilitate content clearly, correctly, and at an appropriate pace.
Students engage with content using a variety of learning tools that promote productive struggle given their unique needs.
Students experience multi
02/16/2021. Tool
Why establish a consistent tutoring session structure?
When students know what to expect, they can better internalize what is expected of them. If each session has a consistent rhythm, students will feel safer and more engaged, and tutors will deliver more consistent and effective sessions. Instead of spending prep time internalizing directions and pacing, they can focus on content.
02/16/2021. Tool
Implementation Checklist
Sessions have a consistent structure with space for relationship-building, independent practice time, and formative assessment.
Implementation Tools
(Click on the links below or visit the pages on the lefthand navigation for more information.)
02/16/2021. Tool
Implementation Checklist
Sessions have curricula with high quality materials that maintain rigor.
Session content complements classroom materials to support student mastery.
Sessions focus on targeted learning goals informed by grade level standards, assessment data, and family and school input.
Sessions have a consistent structure with space for relationship-building, independent practice time, and formative assessment.
If Delivery Mode is Blended: High-quality research-based software is used to
02/16/2021. Tool
What is Blended Learning in a Tutoring Program?
Blended learning is a delivery mode that combines live instruction with digital learning tools for independent practice. High-quality blended learning supplements live tutoring (either virtually or in person) with adaptive software, which modifies the presentation of material in response to student performance to support student learning.
02/16/2021. Tool
Why should you create data-informed student groups?
If your Student-Tutor Ratio is Small Groups instead of one-on-one, the composition of these groups will influence session effectiveness. If students are grouped haphazardly, without regard for their academic strengths and struggles, then tutors will find it much more challenging to meet the individual needs of every student in a group.
02/16/2021. Tool
What is Accessibility?
Students all learn in different ways: some of these differences are obvious, while others are more subtle. However, this seemingly simple truth is surprisingly difficult to internalize in practice. Most learning experiences are designed with only one kind of learning in mind, and thus optimized for only one kind of learner.
02/16/2021. Tool
Why should tutors personalize their tutoring sessions?
The most effective sessions are personalized to meet an individual student’s needs. Student productivity and growth will increase if the tutor can identify the missing or incomplete skills that are holding a student back and focus on those specific skills. Identifying and addressing these skill gaps requires tutors to use both quantitative and qualitative data to shape the content they include and the approach they use during sessions.
02/15/2021. Tool
What is a Landscape Analysis?
A Landscape Analysis outlines the strengths, resources, and needs of a particular community. It provides a framework for designing a service and ensuring that it is embedded directly in the needs of the community.
02/15/2021. Tool
Tutoring Curriculum Overview
While tutoring programs vary greatly in the content that is focused on during sessions, tutors should have a standards-aligned, rigorous, and grade-level appropriate curriculum to use during sessions. Having an established curriculum for tutors to follow ensures that tutors’ planning time is spent optimizing implementation and building deep content knowledge, not creating tutoring session plans.
02/15/2021. Tool
Overview
Below, you will find two protocols for reviewing student academic data, one for a frequent post-session review and one for any data collected on an interim or infrequent basis. These protocols follow the same What/So What/Now What format as the Standard Data Review Protocol, but they are tailored with tutor-specific questions to guide data analysis.
02/15/2021. Tool
Why should you establish a standardized process for Data Review?
Standardizing a Data Review process helps set a clear expectation that the end product of Data Review is not knowledge, but action. Any Data Review Protocol should ensure that raw data is converted into a clear and digestible format before the reflection process so that reviewers can focus their energies on reflecting on the data, rather than synthesizing the data.