All categories/Teaching and training
Classroom delivery · Level Advanced · Classroom Tutoring Teaching
One-on-one: watch them work
I talk a lot, they nod, and still cannot do it.
Prompt
Three things in class: get them doing, surface misunderstanding, make feedback specific. Being eloquent is not the goal.
Task: I talk a lot, they nod, and still cannot do it.
[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
- where they are stuck
- their current method
- time
- goal
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.
[Go through each of these]
- have them do it while I watch
- find the first wrong action
- fix only that and have them redo it
- agree a self-check for next time
[Process]
1. Read the room before following the plan
2. Surface misunderstanding with questions
3. Feedback on behaviour and next step, never on the person
4. Separate tasks by level
5. Leave two minutes for their recap
[Output]
Reading the room, questions, feedback, tiers, close.
[Do not]
- Never embarrass anyone
- Never 'this is so simple'
- Do not skip practice to keep pace
- 'Any questions' is not interactionWhat to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- where they are stuck
- their current method
- time
- goal
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- have them do it while I watch
- find the first wrong action
- fix only that and have them redo it
- agree a self-check for next time