Everyone Got It!

Today was our first Tutorial Day in AVID.  We have all four of our tutors and a pretty full class.  On tutorial days, the students bring questions that they are stuck on from their other classes.  They work in small groups with a tutor to solve the problems and gain a deeper understanding from their peers.

In the near future, they will be doing this perfectly.  However, today was a day to get the basics: understand the processes, know how to work with a group, and what they can expect from peers and tutors.

My objective was simple:

• Students will gain an understanding of the tutorial process, be able to summarize the process and be ready to use tutorials in the AVID classroom.

My classes vary from 6th graders who have never heard of tutorials before to my 7th and 8th graders who did them  all of last year.  The 8th graders are, by far, the least on task and most vocal group.

At the end of the day, one my tutors, Gregg, turned to me and said, "Well, they accomplished the tasks."  After the 8th grade group, my last class, I was happy with that statement.  Looking back, the 8th graders accomplished the most.  It didn't seem like that during class.  I felt that they weren't getting it, that they were just off task.

All 75 of the AVID students could tell exactly what tutorials are.  They all got there in a different way but they all got it.