Homework Help Today – A Tutoring Blog for Students and Tutors Where Students and Tutors can help each other out!

Teaching can be one of the most gratifying career choices – if you’re a teacher, you probably get a thrill out of helping a struggling student understand a difficult concept in any subject.  But what do you do with your summer downtime? Many students need summer tutoring, either to fulfill requirements for the previous school year, or to prepare for the upcoming fall semester.

There are tons of benefits for both teachers and students in tutoring arrangements.  As a teacher, you can keep sharp on your teaching techniques, try out new ones, and stay up-to-date in your subject area.  You might have found that after summer break, you feel a little rusty in the classroom – summer tutoring can be a great way to stay current and avoid this.

Helping a student who finds a particular topic elusive can be an emotionally rewarding experience in itself; and tutoring also provides the opportunity to earn extra money to put towards your well-deserved vacation or further education costs.  Cash-flow can be a problem during the summer months for teachers, so tutoring is a great way to ensure you can keep paying the bills – and you’ll gain valuable experience while doing it.

Tutoring provides you with the flexibility to determine your own schedule, the amount of hours you wish to work, and where you work.  If you love to travel and are adventurous, teaching English as a second language in a foreign country can be a unique experience.  Or, stay at home and work with local kids to contribute to your community and prepare them for the upcoming fall semester (and enjoy the short commute!).  Working with parents as clients can also be a satisfying experience as you get to know more about the community and the kids you teach during the normal school year.  Many students who receive tutoring in addition to regular class time during the school year build lasting relationships with their teachers and often credit them as having a hand in their future successes.

Working over the summer as a tutor has the added benefit of allowing you to deviate from your typical subject area:  maybe you teach English during the normal school year, but you have a hidden passion for math that you miss utilizing.  Tutoring at a basic level can give you the chance to exercise some of those neglected muscles.  Teachers are also in demand for adults and children for whom English is a second language. This chance to experience variety and make an important difference in someone’s life can be greatly appealing.

To re-cap, teachers who tutor enjoy the following perks:

• Increased cash-flow/compensation for lost pay during summer months;
• Rewarding relationship with students and parents;
• Opportunity to set your own hours, work from home, work locally or even travel abroad;
• Chance to try new things; keep your skills focused, and work in areas you might otherwise not have the chance to during the school year.

Visit Tutor Match to build a tutor profile and register to be linked with a student who needs your expertise this summer.

Posted under Teaching, Tutoring

Finding a tutor can be a difficult and sometimes frustrating process. Thanks to the Internet, students and parents now have a free, easy way to find qualified tutors in their area. Tutor Match Tutoring Network is your one stop for all of your tutoring needs.

Whether you’re lost in math, need help in English, or just don’t understand a foreign language, TutorMatch.com can help you find a tutor to help. This is a free search service; there is no fee and you don’t have to give any personal information you’re not comfortable with. Just go to the Tutor Match Local Tutoring Search, type your zip code in the box provided, and you will be able to browse the list of tutors available within a specified radius of your zip code.

If you would like to become a tutor or get a job as a tutor, then TutorMatch.com is the place for you. It is free to post a tutor profile, or for a small fee, you can obtain preferred listing status and have access to more options and better exposure.  Premium TutorMatch Profiles tend to attract about 3 times more student leads on average than free profiles.

Depending on preferences, sessions are scheduled for over the phone, in person, or online. The fees for tutors vary based on experience, but are affordable. To request a tutor, simply fill out a form, which will be sent to the tutor. Once he or she receives the request, they will contact you through the preferred method you have listed.

TutorMatch.com makes finding help for yourself or your child easier than it’s ever been. No matter what subject you are struggling in, Tutor Match has someone that can help.

March Giveaway Contest!
If you’re interested in becoming a tutor on TutorMatch and would like a chance to win a free premium membership, check out the Contest Corner for the free TutorMatch profile Giveaway this month!

Posted under Tutoring, Website Review

When children start having difficulty in school, their love for learning soon begins to fade. Poor grades, social problems, and even problems at home are the inevitable results. If your child is having problems at school, or perhaps you’re having trouble yourself as a high school or college student, finding the right tutor might be the answer.

Finding a tutor is the first step.

The first place to start looking for tutoring assistance is in the educational system. Teachers and professors will often moonlight for a little extra pay and give a student the extra help he or she needs. College towns usually have no shortage of tutoring skills available. Tutors can be found in the student body of the college or university by contacting the institution’s office of student affairs or hanging a note with your phone number in places student gather to eat and study.

Checking for online tutoring services will produce good results. Tutorial services connect the student with a tutor who will work with him or her as needed. The results will be improved grades, an increased comprehension level and a better all-around attitude toward the learning process.

Another place to look for tutoring assistance is the local social services agency. Referrals to excellent tutors may be available since the need is a common one. An excellent tutor can sometimes be found this way.

A potential tutor should never be hired without at least a minimal checking of references.  It certainly would also be worthwhile to check with a site like Family Watchdog,  which contains a database of known offenders.  And just to be sure, always be present or nearby when a tutor meets with your children.

Posted under Parents and Children, Tutoring

Occassionally we get emails from both students and tutors who have had a good experience working with our tutoring referral website, TutorMatch.com.  Since I’ve taken a short break from blogging over the holiday I thought now we would be a good time to get back into it by relating some of these positive testimonials:

Alicia G, an english and reading tutor from Canada, writes: “Hello.  I want to thank you for receiving my first client from you. Please keep the students coming!”

Susan K, a French and Spanish tutor from Schenectady, says, “I tutored a student through your company and it worked out very well. Thank you!”

And John Z, a multi-subject tutor and the Founder of Westside Tutoring in Lakewood, Ohio, has written us several times.  “Excellent response! Thank you for the referrals. Good quality referrals unlike some other tutor referral websites, you actually send people in need of assistance. Well done TutorMatch!”

“Once again, I would like to thank you for an excellent referral. I have a client for the next two weeks at a decent wage and the promise of more work and mentoring down the road, soon. Very nice. By far, your website has returned the best results.”

” Once again, TutorMatch.com has proven to be the best of the tutor referral sites I subscribe to. Not only have you sent quality leads but they have resulted in ongoing relationships that have paid many times the fee to join. Once again, well done and thanks!”

Those are just a few of our most recent testimonials … please keep them coming, and I’d be happy to feature them here!

Posted under Teaching, Tutoring, Website Review

Repetition can be extremely helpful in the learning patterns of students and should be used on a daily basis when tutoring children with their homework. Skills such as math, reading and writing, and learning a new language can be easily learned with the assistance of some suggestive repetition.

Repetition is especially useful when tutoring as children may not have been given the chance to repeat the information that was learned within the classroom setting. When the child is tutored using repetition they are given the chance to use the information learned in the classroom setting and combine it with the practice that they have been exposed to during the tutoring session.

In the past few years learning by repetition has been associated with forming the connection of synapses in brain cells.  This assists in not only learning the information, but in recalling that information throughout the lifetime of the child. Once this information has been committed to memory with the use of repetition, this information may be more easily recalled in the future.

Many skills that are learned through childhood homework assignments are skills that are going to be called upon for further learning. The pyramid of learning that is created can be based upon the repetition of the skills that children learn in their formative and early years.

Repetition is not the end all be all of learning. The learner begins with a limited amount of information (be it words or concepts), and adds in concepts as the process goes along. Gradually, the child will need less and less repetition as he or she learns the concepts which are built upon in the future.

Repetitive teaching techniques can be extremely useful with homeschool tutoring.

Posted under Math Tutoring, Reading, Tutoring

Homework help can be a daunting experience, especially for those parents that have been out of school for years. Use these tips to make the process easier while helping your child to understand the concepts that have been taught that day at school.

1. Provide a quiet place for the child to study and review the concepts that have been learned that day. This could be a time after dinner when the table is clear or any another designated study area within the home or the bedroom.

2. Keep track of assignments. The more you are involved in the child’s school schedule, the more the child is going to consult about it with you. Remember when assignments are due, when assignments need to be started and when any tests or quizzes occur within the classroom.

3. Help children with basic skills including math skills like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. These basic skills are required for any further math concepts to become developed throughout their academic career.

4. Use everyday situations to help your child learn math, English and scientific principals. This will ensure the child will realise the importance of the lessons that are being taught while reinforcing the information that has been covered in the classroom setting. Repetition ensures that the child will retain the information.

5. Use worksheets, computer software and educational games to further develop and practice the concepts that have been taught within the school. Using the skills learned on a daily basis will help to solidify the lesson within the child’s brain.

And finally, don’t be afraid to seek professional tutoring help if you’re in over your head or if your child is simply struggling too much.  Tutor Match has thousands of Math tutors, English tutors, and Science tutors available either in your neighborhood or offering tutoring services online.

Posted under Parents and Children, Tutoring

Choosing a tutor for a second language, be it German, French or Spanish, is not a decision that should be taken lightly. Whether the reason for learning the language is a trip abroad or simply personal growth, proper enunciation, vocabulary and meaning are crucial in the development of the language. For this reason it is important to choose a native speaker of the language or a person that has been extensively trained in the language, preferably in a post-secondary institution.

 
The benefits to hiring a native speaker of the language are the influence that culture will have in the teachings. This tutor has more than likely been exposed to cultural occurrences like food, songs, and beliefs that can enrich the tutoring environment. This information, along with the natural ability to teach dialect and proper pronunciation of the words, combined with the natural phrases used in everyday conversation, are the reasons that many choose to enlist a native speaker of the second language in which they are trying to learn.

Contrary to these thoughts, there are many benefits to choosing a professional tutor that has been educated in the second language to teach the student. Technical aspects of the language will be covered with concise curriculums, and the lessons will come with the expertise of teaching techniques that are shown to these tutors through the course of their education.
 
Using a post-secondary educated tutor will ensure that the basics of the language, the foundation, will be taught before the knowledge is expanded upon and grown into phrases. This technique for learning languages is most effective for those looking to grasp the concept of the language from the bottom up. Although it may take longer to speak as a native, the teachings will remain in the mind solidified as knowledge.

Find an online tutor to teach you a langauge over the internet:

• Online German Tutors
• Online French Tutors
• Online Spanish Tutors

To make the choice, consider the following aspects:

• What are the reasons that the tutor is being hired?
• How long does the student have to learn the language?
• What does the student expect to learn in this time period?

It may be quicker to learn the essentials from a native speaker of the language, rather than to begin with the foundation.
 
Regardless of the choices, speak with the tutor in the initial meeting to discuss the plan of action, curriculum and objectives of the tutoring sessions. Creating a plan of action and practice are two of the essential counterparts to learning a second language.

Posted under Language Tutors, Tutoring

As a 6th grade math teacher in a private school, I often discovered that my classes were a general blend of different public and private schools that either taught traditional Math or adopted newer and alternative forms of math instruction.  I found that the students with the alternative instruction came to 6th grade with a weak set of multiplication and division skills using big numbers and decimals.  I often watched the pain and anguish develop in the faces of these generally good math students because they were behind the rest of the class.  So, what can a parent or teacher do in this case?  Start reviewing early and often!

The first thing to test is your child’s ability to do standard multiplication and not the ladder method. This is fine with small numbers, but once they get to 3 digits and decimals, it becomes nothing but a pain and often a source of errors.  I usually had 2-3 students in each class using the ladder method.  I worked with them during extra help or before school, retraining their multiplication and wouldn’t you believe … they found it much easier to do the traditional vertical multiplication method!  What you can do at home is each night give your child a few problems to do using traditional method. They will be confused at first and might forget, but after a few days they should catch on.  Don’t overwhelm them with a ton of problems; 2-3 each night is fine.

The next thing I suggest is to review their long division skills.  Some students came to 6th grade only knowing how to do “partial sums” which again is fine with small whole numbers, but once you get into decimal division, it doesn’t work as well and creates confusion.  So first, review long division (or teach it depending on the case) and then review decimal division.  Most 5th grade math curriculum covers both long and decimal division so it should not be a foreign concept to a 6th grader.  Each night, give your child 2-3 decimal or long division problems.  Don’t overwhelm or overload.

Parents, if you don’t feel confident about making up your own problems, contact the teacher and ask if he or she can send your child home with a worksheet or if they can recommend a website with problems and examples.  Two very good websites with worksheets are edHelper.com (which is a paid subscription) and Math.com which is free.  And teachers, send your students home with worksheets to do at their own pace.  It may seem like a lot at the beginning of the year, but retraining math skills only makes learning new ones easier.

About our Guest Blogger and Author:
Mrs. Hilary M. is a Math Tutor and Teacher from Princeton, NJ who offers her professional math tutoring services on TutorMatch.com.  She also blogs at Mrs. Mo’s New Jersey, Baby! and HCM Tutoring.

Posted under Math Tutoring, Parents and Children, Tutoring

Many high school students have a difficult experience with their first classic literature assignment. The archaic prose of works by Dickens, Melville and Shakespeare can prove difficult to understand and seem like a whole other language. So how do we break the barriers between literature and learning? 

There are a variety of ways that we can increase comprehension when reading literature. Using these techniques increases the comprehension of a classic novel in a variety of students and can result in successful comprehension of the piece of literature.

One of the top ways to increase comprehension of literature in the classroom, and with tutoring tactics, is to compare the text with a modern day interpretation of the literature. Learning by comparison can be helpful. Comparing classic literature to modern situations can also help students. Often younger generations will be more adept to learn the themes of classics they are able to identify with. If the tutor is able to provide some mirroring within the classic to modern day situations, the student is more likely to learn the information.

Providing a translation for texts written in poetry can also prove helpful. Since poetry is a language all its own, especially with Victorian authors such as Byron, Keats and Shelley, providing a text with a contemporary translation under or opposite of each line in the poem increases comprehension for the student.

Using textual clues such as descriptive words to gain the feeling of the literature can improve comprehension greatly. These identifier words can create recognition of one word, which can lead to the comprehension of one phrase, which can lead to the comprehension of the whole page.

These are just some techniques a good tutor can employ to help their student’s grasp of reading comprehension with classic literature; find a tutor near you to learn more!

Resources for Classic Literature

• Classics at the Online Literature Library
• Classic Lit authors from A to Z
• SparkNotes and Study Guides on Classic Literature
• Free Classic Literature in the Public Domain from the Classic Literature Library
• GradeSaver Classic Notes on Lit Classics
• Free Online Literature and Study Guides

Posted under Reading, Reading Comprehension, Tutoring

Here’s a great video I found focusing on an adult literacy tutor in Rensselaer County, New York.  This volunteer tutor discusses why he started volunteering his tutoring services for adults in need of literacy education.  He’s truly a nice guy who saw a need and decided to donate his time and skill to help out illiterate adults.  A very noble cause – not only kids need tutoring, sometimes adults need tutoring in reading also!

This video is from the tutor’s perspective, there’s also another video from the student’s point of view.

Posted under Literacy, Reading, Tutoring