Practice Between Tutoring Sessions: Making the Week Count

A tutoring session is often once a week. The rest of the week is where most of the learning either sticks or fades. A learner who works through a new idea with a tutor on Tuesday, then does nothing with it until the next Tuesday, often spends the first part of the next session finding it again.

Practice between sessions does not need to be long. It needs to be regular, close to what was just taught, and honest about what the learner still finds hard.

Why the gap between sessions matters

Memory research has said the same thing for a long time: we forget quickly after first learning something, and each time we successfully recall it, the forgetting slows down. Recall works best when it is a little effortful — when the learner has to retrieve the answer rather than reread it.

That has a practical meaning for tutoring. A short, spaced set of retrieval questions a day or two after the session usually does more than one long block of homework the night before the next one.

What good between-session practice looks like

Short and frequent. A short set on several days is easier to keep up than one long block on a single day, and it spaces the recall out.

Close to the last session. The practice should be about what the tutor and learner just worked on, not a random revision set. A learner who is working on fractions this fortnight should be practising fractions.

Retrieval, not rereading. Questions that make the learner produce an answer — a number, a word, a short explanation — beat rereading notes or a worked example.

Mixed in with older topics. Once something is learned, revisiting it every so often keeps it from slipping, and mixing topics helps a learner choose the right method rather than repeating the last one.

Visible to the tutor. If the tutor can see which questions went well and which did not, the next session can start where the learner actually is.

Where Qwizflow fits

Qwizflow is a learning platform, not a tutoring service. A private tutor can create a free tutor account, create a class and share its join code with the learners they already teach. Each learner joins with their own account.

Between sessions, those learners can use:

• Adaptive quizzes on a topic, which change difficulty as they answer.
• Learning paths that break a topic into steps.
• Study guides of short slides, each ending in a quick-check question.
• The Owl chat, which explains and quizzes. It is between-session practice, not a substitute for the tutor.

The ready-made catalogue runs from Foundation to Year 10 and is structured on the Australian Curriculum v9. A learner aged 16 or over can also type their own topic and get a learning path for it.

The tutor sees class progress and mastery for the learners who joined their class, and only that class. A tutor does not see a learner's AI chat transcripts.

A tutor's class is open to learners of any age who are not enrolled through a school. A learner under 16 needs a parent or guardian linked to their account, and joins only once that parent approves the class; their AI features wait until that parent approves them too.

Each learner has their own free AI allowance each month, enough for about 40 new quizzes on its own. A tutor pays nothing per learner. See pricing for what happens past the allowance.

A simple weekly rhythm

One way to set it up, which any tutor can adapt:

1. End of the session: agree on the topic for the week and where to find it.
2. A day or two later: a short quiz on that topic.
3. Mid-week: a second short quiz, or a study guide if the first quiz showed a gap.
4. The day before the next session: one mixed set that includes an older topic.
5. Start of the next session: the tutor looks at class progress and begins with what went wrong.

If you want to see what this looks like with made-up learners, read Morgan's story, a fictional tutor.

FAQ

How much practice should a learner do between tutoring sessions?

Little and often works better than one long session. A few short sets across the week, each a day or two apart, spaces the recall out and is easier to keep up.

Does Qwizflow find learners for a tutor?

No. Qwizflow does not vet, match, find or supply students. A tutor brings the learners they already teach, and each learner joins the tutor's class with their own account.

Can a tutor see what a learner typed into the AI chat?

No. A tutor sees class progress and mastery for their own class. AI chat transcripts are not shown to a tutor.

Who can join a tutor's class?

Learners of any age who are not enrolled through a school. A learner under 16 needs a parent or guardian linked to their account, and joins only once that parent approves the class; their AI features wait until that parent approves them too.