How do I successfully teach small groups?

There’s a misconception that in a group setting, tutors should be treating each student individually and giving them as much one-on-one time as in a private tutoring lesson. While it is natural to immediately use the same approach to tutoring as you would do in a one-on-one lesson, you should embrace the group setting!

Focussing on one student while the other sits there, then swapping, is not a productive use of their time. Instead, look for ways of explaining and working through content where you can involve both students simultaneously. If you want them to both do some practise questions, that would be a good time to sit with them individually and check their individual questions / concerns while the others keep working.

It’s important to strike a balance between working with them together so that they can all benefit from each others’ knowledge, and having some one-on-one time to check in with them about how they’re feeling.

It’s not about pretending you have two or three one-on-one students in the same hour, it’s about making sure each student feels individually addressed, while reaping the benefits of having multiple minds in the same space.

Make sure to chat to your students in your trial session or first class. They may know each other, but they don’t know you. Just like a one-to-one class, make sure you get to know the students - all of them - equally well. It’s also important for you to get an understanding of why they’re receiving tutoring as a group, as this can help you plan your teaching. Eg.

1. They’re a little shy —> hold back on more competitive or verbal activities in the beginning

2. They’re very social —> make a mental note that you might need to monitor them closely to keep the group on track.

3. Create a group chat

Obvious, but make sure you’re in contact with all group members, rather than relying on one to pass the information onto everyone else. You can keep it lively with interesting websites to read, practise questions to attempt, or subject-related memes to prompt group communication outside of class.

It can also be a good idea to reach out to each student individually, just to let them know they can always contact you with any private concerns about tutoring or their own progress.

Useful for content where the order is important: eg. memorising elements of the Periodic Table, important historical dates, stages of a biological process, etc.

Have one student say the first thing to be memorised, then the next student say the following thing, and so on. This creates a fun, mildly competitive atmosphere which can motivate students to remember the content. It works especially well if you warn them that you’ll play the same game next lesson!

Useful for formative assessment of how much your students are remembering of the topic you’re studying.

Have your students pretend they’re the teacher and explain all of the content back to you, the student. Give them 5ish minutes to prepare, then get them to present it back to you. You can even quiz them at the end by pretending you’re a student with questions about the topic. This helps your students to remember the content so far and benefit from what each other have remembered to fill any gaps. It’s a fun warmup game to get them into the lesson.

Useful for giving students feedback on their work, particularly for essay-style or long mark questions.

Have your students write an extended response to the same prompt in advance of a lesson. Write a response yourself, at a level that doesn’t make it too obvious it’s you, the tutor. Type up the responses so they’re anonymous and hand them out in class, ensuring no one in your group gets their own work.

Give them time to read the response, then give verbal feedback. Work together to positively point out what worked well, and what could use further improvement. This is a great way to show your students that it’s not just you - others can pick up on similar points (helps them to trust your feedback!). It also places them in the mind of the assessor, which helps them become more aware when they go back to being the writer.

Useful for promoting teamwork and independent thinking.

Give your students a tricky question (worth several marks, one known to be a curveball according to the Examiner’s Report, etc.) and have them figure out the answer together. Don’t get involved until they’ve come to some sort of an answer. This is a classic method of running groups, and checking how well your students are absorbing the theory.

Useful for prompting student creativity or reinforcing necessary connections.

Similar to Follow the leader. Have one student say something, and the next student say it back, but slightly altered. This works well for brainstorming synonyms in essay-style questions, or for memorising links - eg. ‘if you get a question on x, you have to mention y’.

Useful for working on essay / long answer response structure.

Give each of your students a different prompt / question, and get them to plan and write out the first section (introduction / topic sentences / opening statement, etc.). Then have them swap, and try to continue the new essay / question they’ve just received, based on the plan + opening that they just received. Then have them swap again to write the conclusion. This can create some funny results if the opening was unclear! Go through each essay / response with them and check if they are cohesive, fluent and clear. This is a great exercise for illustrating the importance of clarity in introductions, and overall in longform responses.

Useful for content that requires diagrams + labelling.

Give one student a set of diagrams to draw (eg. structures of chemical compounds, cell structure, etc.) and get the other one to write out some names / labels for important aspects of the content (eg. organic compound names, features of a cell). Then have them swap - let one student label / name the diagrams, and the other student draw out the diagrams / images for the names they’ve just received. This works with more visual learners who need to learn some content.

Useful for students motivated by competition who are already very close with each other. Be careful to only introduce this activity if both students feel generally confident with a task. Not suitable for shyer students.

Give students a time limit and have them list out everything they can think of about a particular topic. This is a useful method for you to formatively assess where their respective gaps are. Alternatively, you can make things competitive and get the students to solve a question as fast as they can. A nice easy way to get students to do practise questions while making judgement calls about speed versus accuracy - an apt recreation of exam settings.

Useful for testing your students and simulating test / SAC / exam conditions.

In advance of the lesson, have each student send you practise questions they haven’t been able to answer or haven’t attempted because they look daunting. It’s important that they do so individually so that no other student can see the questions in advance. Collate the questions into a practise test and give it to the students - this creates a personalised practise test / SAC / exam which addresses the exact areas of weakness of all the students present. It might even expose them to questions they would not otherwise have received.

Useful for making students aware of examiner requirements.

Give the student sample responses / working out / essay paragraphs that you’ve created. Be sure that these range from average to A+ examples. Have them work together as a panel to ‘judge’ your work, discussing with each other what you can improve or what you did well. If they have a rubric for an upcoming test or SAC, ask them to judge how well you adhere to the rubric criteria. This is a great tactic to help students become aware of how their own work will be assessed, as well as identify the differences between medium and higher scoring responses. It’s also really great for shyer students, as it is not their own work being publicly assessed

And last but not least, a good old Kahoot or other fun online quiz will always go a long way. It’s an oldie but a goodie!