If you offer professional tutoring services then you need to always be on the look out for ways to help your students to develop their academic skills. One of my favorite skill development exercises is the writing journal. Journals can be kept on a number of subjects from English to Social Studies. Journaling exercises also range in types from timed writings to daily entries.
Timed writings are great for home tutoring sessions in a variety of subjects. They can be used to develop English language or foreign language skills, as well as to develop information recall from previous tutoring sessions. When structuring your timed writing you will want to set the time limit to between five and fifteen minutes and provide your students with a topic. Your topic selection can be specific, such as “what sparked World War II?” Your topic selection can also be general, such as “write about your summer vacation.”
If you specialize in a specific topic, such as Spanish tutoring, then journaling exercises will need to focus on specific skills, pieces of information or topics. For example, one journaling exercise that is appropriate for Spanish tutoring sessions is to have the student write an entry using the vocabulary words that you are focusing on that week. You can also have the students write on cultural topics related to the foreign language being studied. These exercises are intended to provide students with opportunities to utilize the language skills that they are learning and to deepen their understanding of the cultures behind the language.
Do you have a recommendation for a learning exercise or journaling topic? Post your responses below.
