Studying chemistry is no mean feat especially for students now as the education syllabus is being revised to become more challenging. Chemistry private tuition teachers and chemistry online tuition teachers on the other hand would also have to train themselves to hone their skills and get better at teaching the subject with a more advanced approach. So, here are some of the best strategies that tutors can follow!
Firstly, teachers should develop a syllabus and have lesson plans. This is not something that is unique to Chemistry but is applicable to teaching anything else. Chemistry has a lot of topics and concepts and it is important for the chemistry tutor to plan out in which order and how in-depth they want to teach them.
Overlooking this planning might result in lessons that may be too confusing and complicated for students. Some teachers may get too carried away in a certain topic and go too deep into it which is both unnecessary and detrimental for a student?s learning.
Secondly, teachers should understand what type of learner their students are. Some students might be visual learners and thus will need pictures to be able to intake and withhold information more easily. Meanwhile, some students can understand easier by reading passages and others can understand easier by listening to videos and audio books. In short, every student?s learning technique is unique and it is important to understand what it is.
Students may struggle at learning a concept because the teacher is teaching them in an unfavourable manner and this can be avoided easily if the teacher understands the student. For example, if you were to teach a student titration, a visual learner will need photos of the set-up and the endpoint while other students may only need written steps on what to do.
Thirdly, chemistry tutors should use online applications, websites and tools to make learning easier for the students. Many teachers focus too much on their own notes and syllabus that they do not try to get help from external online sources.
For example, when teaching students about enantiomers it can be very confusing for students when seeing two dimensional pictures of the molecule with wedges and dashes. Instead, teachers can use online tools that help students visualise the molecules in 3 dimensions which will help to make the differences much clearer. Similarly, there are many other useful and interactive online tools that can assist students in learning the concepts more effectively.
Fourthly, tutors should not be the only ones who do all the teaching. From time to time, chemistry tuition teachers should ask students to explain the concepts that they have learnt back to them. When doing so, it will be much easier for teachers to see the gaps in the knowledge of the students.
Moreover, it will also be easier to spot the misunderstandings that the student has. Most of the time, these fundamental flaws that students have will go hidden as they may still be able to answer a lot of questions even with the flawed logic. Correcting these flaws early will benefit students greatly as learning the wrong concept is very detrimental.
Lastly, it is important to test students on what they have learnt as soon as possible so that they are able to correct their mistakes. This will also help students avoid procrastination in studying after every lesson. For example, after every lesson (or maybe the next lesson) teacher can make mini quizzes that test on what they have learnt in that lesson.
This will make students more disciplined to listen during lessons. Moreover, this will also help to identify students who are struggling and students who are not taking the lessons seriously. Teachers will then be able to focus on correcting these students to help them perform better.
