Mastery Map and Standard-Based Peer Tutors
About This Strategy
This strategy will help you build a visual and a system to create a network of student tutors available to support other students with a particular standard/skill once they have reached mastery of this same standard/skill and if they applied to be one of these mastery tutors.
In a mastery-based learning system, students master skills or standards at different paces, and are not constrained to be in the same unit or lesson at the same time as each other. This creates many new opportunities, and this strategy will help to harness the power of having students in the same room at different levels of mastery of different standards, and create a student centered support system able to adapt to the needs of a diverse group of learners.
Implementation Steps
- Start by creating a large class poster allowing you to display the different standards and skills of your curriculum. If the idea of having all of them for the year feels too big, consider having all the standards displayed for an upcoming quarter.
- Design this poster in a way that can allow students to place a post it note or sticky note with their name or initials in a standard when they master it. Consult the Mastery Map to Organize Skill Tutors template below to get started.
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Determine how students can move their post it toward the mastery zone. Consider the following elements:
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How can students elect to be assessed for mastery at their own pace in a given standard they have not mastered yet? (One strategy to check out for this is Battling the Boss.)
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When can students update their status on the mastery map (specific time of the class, anytime, etc…)?
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- Give students a choice to apply to become a skill/standard tutor in the skill/standard they just mastered. Not everyone will want to do this and that is absolutely fine!
- Make available to them an application letter. Take a look at the Template for Map of Mastery Poster in the resource section below, for example.
- Make also available to students a simple rubric such as this one from GPP30 or at least a checklist with criteria that make a good tutor. Even better, as you introduce the system, ask your students to help you define this checklist. They will love doing so and it may teach you about what is important to them in a teacher.
- Establish rules and procedures for students to request support of a tutor in a specific skill/standard, and collaborating with the tutor. See the "Colored Cups or Cards for Student Feedback" strategy for ways for students to request support and feedback from a teacher or a peer.
- Celebrate and highlight good tutorship every week, provide constructive feedback when necessary, and pay attention to the students who respond the best to being tutors or to work with a specific tutor.
From Peer Tutor to Peer Teachers
Students who gain mastery of a topic can take on a larger "teaching" role within a classroom, through a process that insures both that the "master" student isn't prevented from moving forward in their own learning and that their teaching is guided to be an effective learning tool.
Implementation steps:
- Review assessment data to determine what you want to tutor and reassess. One to two topics that need reassessment is preferable because it can be possible to set up tutoring groups where each student acts as a tutor for the other. When selecting topics and looking at the student data, keep in mind mastery tutors are not replacing the complex teaching that you do, they are supplementing and supporting. See coach tips below for more information.
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Write a script and make copies so that each student tutor has one copy for each topic and each student they help. See an example of a Master Tutor script in the resources below.
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Set up tutoring groups. As shown in the Master Tutor Partner Setup example in the resources below, highlighters are used to identify students who were not proficient in a particular topic. These students are paired with another student who could act as a tutor expert. See tips for success below.
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If this is the first time implementing this strategy, it is critical to add the following steps:
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Set the purpose as inclusive, and democratic; celebratory of all students because the tutoring role is accessible to all students. Reiterate the difference between a classroom of "ones" and a community.
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Model the script. Try to expand, as you are modeling, to make it interactive. To do this have some students in mind who can begin to take on the voice of the mastery tutor.
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Have resources ready. For example, printouts of the assessment results, the original assessment, relearning activities and new assessments. These can be provided as paper copies or by using an application like Blendspace. See an example of a Blendspace resource in the Controlled Experiments: Identifying Parts of an Experiment resource below:
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Set up the room where students have dedicated space to spread out their resources. Maintaining a quiet work environment contributes directly to the efficacy of the Master Tutor Project, so help students to work quietly. A quiet environment can be helped by the way tutoring groups are set up in Step 3 above.
Coach Tips
- Do not be afraid to have a public representation of the level of mastery of your students in each standard. In a mastery based progression, students learn quickly that the key word is not yet. In other words, they understand that this map is fluid and that students can move up and down on the map as they progress. Plus the fact that there are so many different standards creates opportunities for everyone to be a tutor at some point for a given standard.
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One important thing to decide will be if you want students in need of a tutor to be able to select a specific tutor or not. If the answer to this question is no, then student tutors in a specific standard will have to pay attention to the signal you have decided to use for students to ask for help in a specific standard.
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If every student has access at all times to a device, you could consider using a tech tool for students to submit a request for help instead of post-its or colored cups. The questions to ask yourself then become:
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Why would this be better for you?
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Is it worth the trouble then?
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If it is, would you be the one centralizing the messages asking for help and assigning student tutors to help or would you like your students to have direct access to this backchannel?
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If you want your students to run this backchannel themselves, you will have to think about the potential issues arising there so that you could anticipate them.
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Master Teacher Tips
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Any topic works for student mastery tutors, but students acting as tutors have better success on skills and/or concepts that rely less on difficult conceptual understanding. With practice throughout the year, students gain confidence in their teaching skills and can be reliable tutors of concepts of increasing complexity.
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When setting up groups account for personality type, friendships, learning style, level of perseverance, gender and level of teaching/learning aptitude. This sounds complicated, but it only took about 10 minutes per class to develop the tutoring groups.
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Maintaining a quiet work environment contributes directly to the efficacy of the Master Tutor Project, so help students to work quietly.
Check out my "Mastery Learning in Science: Students as Teachers" lesson included in the resources below to see how I structures mastery tutoring.