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Breakout rooms are labeled by content unit.
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Each room contains slides with content summaries and practice questions.
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Tutors work independently or in pairs to staff each room and work through the problems on the board with small groups.
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Students may come with questions, but modeled problem-solving is always provided.
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As needed, tutors breakout students for focused, one-on-one help.
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Students move themselves to breakout rooms based on their need.
OurDesign
Tutor #1
Tutor #2
Tutor #3
Tutor #4
Tutee
Tutee
Timing & Frequency
It was one of our goals to make this resource as available as possible to our students, understanding that many of them require a great deal of flexibility in their education. We thought opening the sessions during established school hours would be critical, but we also saw value in providing a late, after-hours session during which students might prefer to seek help.
Delivery
In considering how our sessions would be organized and run, we wanted our tutees to take charge in determining how they could best be helped which we anticipated would promote flexibility and differentiation among our learners. We also wanted to encourage participation by structuring the time such that students participating were not required to come professing their weaknesses to receive extra help. Rather, tutors could effectively model complex problem-solving while reviewing the key ideas of a unit. When properly trained, the tutors could prompt engagement with scaffolding questions about the work they were doing on the board. Also, when adequately staffed, tutors could step away and work with students one-on-one as it became necessary.
We recognize the time our volunteer tutors would be sacrificing by helping with this effort. To encourage their confident participation, we developed practice lessons and shared them prior to the tutor sessions in which they would be used. Tutors, then, had the opportunity to work out the practice themselves and check their work against a key. This, we expected, would also help them be more efficient in their job of satisfying our participants’ needs.
Content
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Three different days a week
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Three different times
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10am or 11am
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3:30pm
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8:00pm
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Teacher-prepared
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Each set includes big ideas, relevant formulas, constants, and practice questions representative of common tasks
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Shared with tutors in advance of sessions
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Loaded prior to session start time
Tutor Training
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Asynchronous in Google Classroom (access code : a3gtoqx)
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Each week one short article, accompanying quiz, and discussion prompt were revealed
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Completion by the end of Q3 earned reward
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Qualifying tutor status for Q4 and 20 extra credit points on the semester grade
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Content based on Online Tutor Training Module from Lincoln Land Community College
It was important to us that the tutor training we provided did not usurp a great amount of time from our tutors, so that they may continue to have success in their own classes. While this training could have been administered in weekly live meetings by a teacher, the content of each training needed to be applied to a distance learning, virtual environment which required some real thought and reflection. An article summarized considerations tutors should have for the process of tutoring and the students with which they work. As a means of demonstrating their understanding, students would complete a short comprehension-based quiz. In an effort to apply the content to our unique model, a discussion prompt was also provided to accompany the article and all tutors contributed to a public forum, sharing their thoughts and perspectives.
