Purpose: Use the supporting table to help move from observation to diagnosis to instructional response to ensure each session is focused, responsive, and impactful.
Why Personalize Tutoring Sessions?
Personalized tutoring is more effective because it targets the specific skill gaps holding students back. By using both quantitative and qualitative data, tutors can tailor content and strategies to better meet student needs—leading to greater engagement and academic growth.
What Data Should Tutors Use?
Tutors should prioritize Mastery Data, which shows how well a student understands the content or standards being taught. Useful sources include:
- Exit Tickets – Quick assessments at the end of a session to check understanding of the day’s objective.
- Student Work – Assignments or classwork that reveal student thinking, strengths, and gaps.
- Blended Learning Software – If applicable, software can provide real-time performance data and flag misconceptions.
- Standardized Assessments – Broader data to identify areas for remediation or acceleration.
Tutors should regularly collect and review this data to personalize instruction and evaluate their own effectiveness.
How Should Tutors Use Mastery Data?
- Identify Learning Barriers
Use data to pinpoint why a student hasn’t mastered a concept. Misidentifying the cause can lead to ineffective support. - Plan a Targeted Approach
Once the root cause is clear, design a session that directly addresses it—whether reinforcing a past concept or introducing a new one.
| What did you observe? | Why did it happen? | How will you address it? |
|---|
- Was the student able to practice all aspects of the session’s learning goal?
- How many at-bats, or opportunities for practice, did the student have during the session?
| Insufficient or misaligned practice Your data shows that the student had the necessary prior knowledge; however, they still struggled to apply the new skills. | - Review practice from past sessions to check alignment with their learning goals. Did the student practice what they were assessed on?
- Add additional at-bats to upcoming sessions.
- Plan to monitor the student’s mastery as they practice and provide feedback.
- Reassess the student after more practice. Did they improve? If so, why; if not, why not?
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- Did the content in the session require previous knowledge or skills?
- Has the student demonstrated mastery of this knowledge or skill?
- Was new information presented in a different and unfamiliar way? (e.g. The student now had to extract data from a chart, not a table as they’d done before.)
| Prior Knowledge Issue The student didn’t have (or struggled with) prerequisite concepts/skills that were necessary to access new material in the first place. | - Return to the session’s learning goal: are there prerequisite skills/concepts embedded in the goal that need to be addressed?
- Review or re-teach missing prerequisite skills and concepts in upcoming sessions.
- Provide additional practice on the learning goal after pre-requisite skills are addressed.
- Reassess the student after more practice. Did they improve? If so, why; if not, why not?
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- Did the student come up with a wrong answer while following a reasonable logical process? Why?
- Was there material this session built on or continued that required the student to think about this concept in a new way?
- Is there previous vernacular the student has learned that might be getting in the way of learning this new vocabulary?
| Common Misconception The student holds one or more common misconceptions that can be confusing when learning this specific material for the first time. | - Plan an error analysis highlighting student misconception. If this was what they had misunderstood, which wrong answer would they give to the new question you design?
- Address and clarify the misconception.
- Provide additional practice after clarifying.
- Reassess the student after more practice. Did they improve? If so, why; if not, why not?
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- Did the student show correct conceptual understanding, but...
- ...Make a computational error?
- ...Forget a single crucial step while following the correct process?
- ...Make a minor thoughtless error?
| Precision/Execution Error The student grasped the fundamental concepts of the material, but made more basic errors. | - Consider boosting the rigor of this student’s practice to avoid boredom and carelessness.
- Provide practice where the student must correct a series of work samples that include precision or execution errors similar to the ones they demonstrated in their own work.
- Reassess the student after more practice. Did they improve? If so, why; if not, why not?
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- Did the student make a mistake you didn’t expect or haven’t seen before?
- Is there something you know about the student’s thinking that might explain it?
| Uncommon Misunderstanding The student showed a misunderstanding you had no reason to plan for beforehand. | - Consider re-teaching material in a new way.
- Ask open-ended questions about their work sample to gain clarity on their line of thinking and potential misunderstanding.
- Reassess the student after more practice. Did they improve? If so, why; if not, why not?
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