Understanding and Guiding your students
When a tutor enters a classroom or workshop with students, they should be equipped to help students with their Composition course’s assignments according to each student’s individual needs as well as the expectations of the instructor. A session could include anything from conversation on the assignment and brainstorming ideas for papers, topic sentences, and claims to having students complete exercises on structure and grammar.
Tutor’s in the SWW Composition Program may work with individuals, groups, or pairs of students in a workshopping session. For this reason, it’s important for tutors to understand how to best facilitate group discussion and learning.
LISTEN to the following podcast from Joan Perisse, an instructor and EOP tutor at SUNY New Paltz, as she gives tips on how to guide students through the writing process in pairs or small groups
Bloom’s Taxonomy
In order to meet a student where they are in the writing process, a tutor must first acknowledge the student’s understanding of writing. To do this, tutor’s can refer to Bloom’s Taxonomy.
This model assesses a students’ standing in higher order learning.
Bloom’s Taxonomy in hierarchical order: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create.
WATCH this short video to understand how Bloom’s Taxonomy contributes to effective critical thinking skills:
For instance, a student who has the ability to remember and understand certain writing techniques or rules of grammar, must then work on the ability to apply them to their writing.
Other students who can apply the rules of grammar or stylized writing, should then move to work on deeper analysis of rhetorical situations.
Or it may be that a student clearly understands how to structure an argument essay; however, the student has difficulty applying what they know when it comes to organizing their ideas.
Another student might have applied what they know about writing an argument essay, but they get stuck with the self-evaluation process and cannot grasp how to revise a draft.
With this understanding, a tutor can focus on the the student’s need in each session.
To learn more about Bloom’s Taxonomy, read the following article. (Library Access Required): Retrieval Practice and Bloom’s Taxonomy: Do Students Need Fact Knowledge Before Higher Order Learning.
Moving a Session Forward
Once tutors get a grasp on where students stand on the pyramid, they can move forward in a session and focus on accomplishing tasks.
Brainstorming & Discussion
Brainstorming and discussion make up a large part of tutor-student interaction. Tutors can aid students in the brainstorming process by encouraging free-writing exercises, asking specific probing questions related to a work or topic, or guiding them through discussion.
Not only should tutors engage in discussion to build rapport and trust, but they should also encourage discussion of the student’s ideas about assignments. Tutors should facilitate discussion about aspects of the writing process, i.e; crafting thesis statements, writing topic sentences, making claims, and structuring their ideas in their papers.
Example Questions: What do you want your thesis statement to be? What is your big claim about this work? What is the author trying to accomplish?
Outlining: Yes, It Is an Important Step
While students may balk at being asked to create an overly-detailed outline, tutors should encourage students to create an informal outline before embarking on writing a first draft. Outlining often helps students to organize their ideas both when they are struggling with a topic and when they are verbally able to discuss a topic but not in an organized way. In both cases, an outline provides a scaffold for the essay.
Example Questions: How can you layout your ideas in a way that best supports your claim? How can we group together the examples and data you found?
Here is a helpful video by a law profession about the importance of outlining:
Writing
When a student begins the writing process, the tutor is not responsible for editing every error but rather guiding the student to a deeper understanding of the writing process. Tutors should work with students on sentence structure, organization, and exercises in refining grammar skills. Tutors should not edit a student’s paper or tell them what to write.
Questions to think about:
- How have you seen Bloom’s Taxonomy at work in your own education?
- What is the role of discussion in tutoring for writing?
Exercise (optional):
Write an outline for a session with your students. Imagine a student brings in a completed draft for an essay and wants help with organization. How would you begin and end the session? What are some of the questions you might ask?
