Strategies for Tutoring the SAT

It truly is a privilege to sit with a tutee, knowing that he or she has entered my life for a particular reason. As a Christian, I pray for God to cross my path with the tutees He wills for me to tutor. What a blessing it has been! Partaking in the education process of a young mind is very rewarding. To see a tutee become excited to learn, or eager for our next session brings a smile to my face. Whether it is helping my tutee score a seven hundred on an SAT section, or simply showing him or her how to subtract fractions, I know that we are a team. I am the coach; he or she is the player. It is my job to convey my knowledge of a subject to my tutee in a way they can easily learn. Praying for my students, and for God to show me how to reach them, has opened the door to many wonderful tutor/tutee relationships. I consider my students a blessing and tutor them heartily as unto the Lord.

Encouragement plays a huge role in my tutoring technique. I believe strongly in encouraging those around me to use their gifts and talents to reach their full potential. Burying talent is not an option. I serve a loving God who has big plans for His children! I long to see my tutees succeed and share in the joy of their satisfaction. Why hold back? Give it your all and leave the consequences to God. A fear of failure will only hold you back from accomplishing your purpose in life.

I mainly tutor high school SAT students. I have found that hour and a half to two hour sessions work best, depending on the tutee's attention span. I typically use Kaplan's SAT Comprehensive Program and Princeton Review's Real SAT practice tests with my tutees. If a tutee's weakness is vocabulary I have found Kaplan's Word Power and Barron's Picture These SAT Words to be valuable resources. Providing my tutees with the proper resources to begin with is a must. What I use varies from tutee to tutee as they have different strengths and weaknesses and different types of learning styles.

For example, if an SAT student was a visual learner struggling with vocabulary I would provide them Barron's Picture These SAT Words. If he or she was an auditory learner we would read the SAT words aloud from Kaplan's Word Power. I assign kinesthetic learners to use the vocabulary words in a story of their own. It is crucial to meet tutees where they are at and relate to them on their level.

When I first begin with a tutee it is vital for me to assess his or her strengths and weaknesses. I have found that having a tutee take a full-length practice SAT is beneficial. Not only does it open the tutee's eyes to the depth of the SAT and its content, it also show me where the tutee is at in the preparation process. Once I have scored the practice exam I can plan a goal-oriented agenda. Knowing if math, critical reading, or writing should be our primary focus determines the path we take.

I have found it most beneficial to work through math problems together. I do this by having the tutee solve the problem and provide an answer. If they are correct I ask them how they arrived at the answer. If they are incorrect I ask them to show me the steps they took that lead to the incorrect answer. Then, I walk them through the correct way to do the problem. To make sure the tutee has learned the principal and would be able to solve a similar problem in the future, I have them do additional sample problems. If they can walk me through the correct process and show me their work, we move on to the next type of math problem.

SAT Critical Reading passages take up a lot of time and are best assigned for homework. Going over tips to analyze the types of Critical Reading questions (Big Picture, Little Picture, Inference, and Vocabulary) is something I deem important during Critical Reading tutoring sessions. Training a tutee to highlight, skim passages, markup passages, and seek out the author's tone and main idea is crucial. Utilizing the aforementioned tips in practice problems is beneficial during the tutoring session. Also, the previously mentioned vocabulary exercises would be done with Critical Reading SAT students.

Training the tutee to write an essay for the SAT is fundamental to any SAT tutoring. Kaplan includes many sample essays in their comprehensive program that are very informative. After going through the essay recommendations and requirements I have my tutees practice brainstorming, outlining, and writing an essay. Time management is important for all aspects of the SAT, but especially vital to the essay. As the old cliché states, practice makes perfect! Once the tutees have written high scoring essays we move onto the multiple choice writing section.

There is a section in Kaplan's Comprehensive Program that discusses common grammatical errors found in the correcting sentences/paragraph sections. I go through this with all of my SAT students. Written English is very different from spoken English (especially in today's society)! As a writer, I thoroughly enjoy doing multiple writing exercises with the tutees. I have found that it has even sharpened my technical writing skills!

Being approachable is important if you want to be a successful tutor. The tutees need to know that you are not perfect and that you will not judge them for giving wrong answers. I have found honestly answering, "I don't know, let me find out and get back to you," is much better for report than pretending you "know it all". Praising a tutee is another important aspect of tutoring. It gives the tutees a sense of accomplishment and excitement to press on. Knowing that someone believes in you is one of the best motivators to persevere.

Patience, flexibility, and enthusiasm are some of the virtues for tutoring the SATs. God gives me the grace I need to tutor and the ability to meet the tutees where they are in their studies. I am blessed to be a tutor and greatly look forward to my future tutoring endeavors.