Case study: Different Tutoring implementation for years 1-3 and 4-6

Sue O’Sullivan, Principal, Glenferrie Primary School

How did your students go during remote learning?

We have such a wonderful community and all the teachers and parents were really supportive and communication was great. There was a perception that kids might have fallen behind but generally speaking we haven’t found that to be the case. If anything we are finding they’re more resilient. The kids come into the school grounds and they’re excited to be here. 

How did you go about getting tutoring started?

I have appointed a teacher at school to oversee the program, with extra time allocated for new responsibilities like supporting the tutor / teachers engagement each week, helping with lesson planning and collecting all the data. Our overseeing teacher will also be keeping an eye on each of the students and how they’re progressing - including switching groups around if we think that is needed.

How does your tutoring for younger students differ from your offer for older students?

We have been really conscious of student engagement and how students will respond in terms of classroom dynamics of new tutoring resources. I think the students in younger years (years 1-3) will be more open to tutoring - and going out of the classroom for the small group support, as we do versions of that already for our learning interventions. But for our older students (years 4-6) we are really mindful of the possible stigma of leaving the room for their intensive learning. We want these students to succeed, not worry about what others are doing. So we have arranged for the small group tutoring to be done by the classroom teacher, within the classroom, by bringing in another teacher to manage the rest of the students. This means it ‘feels’ really similar to the group work that the students will all be used to - so they’re not disrupted by a change in routine - so we expect it will be received well. 

How did you hire your tutor resources?

We only received a small amount of money for our tutoring, so have had to be creative and targetted in how we spend it. We have hired an experienced, retired teacher to run all our tutoring sessions. Our new tutor has real expertise, especially in literacy and numeracy, can think on her feet, and already has a good understanding of our school and school community. We know that good relationships are the most important factor in helping our students succeed so we’ve really thought about that.