Becoming an independent learner

How do you make sure your mentee is doing the work, and not you – questions to use:

  • What did you understand?
  • Which bits were hard?
  • Can you tell me the main idea?
  • If you could do it, what would you do?
  • What are the key words you need to use?
  • What do you think it means?
  • What do you think the answer might be?
  • What information do you need to find out? Where? Who? When? How?
  • What do you think you need to do first?
  • Have you got notes from class about that?
  • Have you got a revision book or website that could help?
  • What do you think you need to learn more about for next time?

Things that you might find yourself doing that you can hand over to your mentee as you see fit:

Writing Reading
Scribing the brainstorming

Scribing a whole piece of writing

Giving sentence starters

Reading out questions

Highlighting key words

Reading texts out loud

Reading out difficult words

Using your finger to split up words or keep the place on the page

Editing Study skills
Pointing out mistakes

Giving the correct answer

Writing out spellings

Taking notes of vocabulary in a note book

Taking notes of a strategy that you can use again

Finding the page

Researching a topic or using the dictionary

Revision plans – ideas for mentors

  1. Think how you used to (or still do?) revise.
  2. How did you learn to do it?
  3. What worked and what didn’t for you and why?
  4. Brainstorm all the different types of revision that you can think of.
  5. What resources would you need from Love to Learn?
  6. Which type of revision might you introduce first and why?
  7. How would you show your mentee each skill and embed it?

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