Blog 4- Mock Tutoring Session

Last Monday we conducted a mock tutoring session in which one classmate was the tutor and one was the student. I had the role of the tutor. Using conversation, the student and I discussed the assignment, and we broke down what it was that the assignment asked her to write. The student already had an idea of what she wanted to write about as a main topic, so we focused on building supporting ideas. This was a bit challenging, so we went back through the text and the student began to list inportant points that she felt would be relevant to the piece she was writing. This became quite challenging for me, because as we drew on more ideas, I lost track of thoughts and needed to stop the session and ask the student "wait a minute, what was the main topic again and how do these points relate?". (not a very good tutoring moment for me, I admit!)

As we continued with the session, we did a sort of mapping and organized how her essay would look, what each paragraph would be about, and when we reached the conclusion, like the Reigstad reading suggested, I encouraged the reader to somehow bring it all together. Bring all the points together that she discussed into the last paragraph.

Then she made a web of the points she wanted to discuss in her paper and I made suggestions on where I thought she should give more detail, where the reader might want to know more.

Overall, I was very lucky my student Erin responded well to feedback and was very interactive and gave me feedback as well. The student was motivated in accomplishing something in the session. Collaboration was more challenging than I thought and it was hard for me to not be so "teacher-like" and keep the session student centered or use a collaboration between student and tutor.