What Should I Write in My Tutoring Lesson Notes?

Hmmm...What should I write about our lesson today?
 

Sometimes it can be challenging to think of what to write in your lesson notes after meeting with a student.  While you may think that it bodes good will with a parent to send a note with each lesson saying something to the effect of, "Janie did awesome today!  She's super-duper!  She's going to do GREAT this year!!!" please recall that your clients are not daft and (most likely) they do not appreciate either disingenuous or patronizing notes from their student's tutor. 

Instead of having to think up a novel way to write about how hard Janie did or did not work during your tutoring session, it is more productive to write about what Janie worked on and how she achieved in that specific task.  A good item to include in notes to parents regarding lessons is an “At Home Assignment” section where parents can quickly review a list of items with which they, too, can follow-up with their student.  This list can also serve as a copy-and-paste tool for beginning your next set of lesson notes.  For example, if you wrote this section at the end of your lesson record:

Janie’s At Home Assignments:
1) Complete essay using all 10 new vocabulary terms
2) Cursive letter K - finish 2 pgs.
3) Study prefix (1) and root words (5) for quiz on Tuesday!
4) Read to page 50 of book for English class

Then, for your next lesson with the student, you may wish to begin your lesson notes as such:

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Review of Janie’s At Home Assignments:

1) Complete essay using all 10 new vocabulary terms—Janie did a wonderful job incorporating 7 of the 10 vocabulary words into a well-crafted, 5-paragraph essay, successfully using the transitions and topic sentence skills we have been working on for the past few months.  Janie found the remaining 3 vocabulary words more challenging, so we focused on those words until Janie was able to master each word and integrate it into her essay.  We learned 5 new vocabulary words today.
 
2) Cursive letter K - finish 2 pgs—Janie is working well towards her goal of learning to write in cursive script.  She wrote very elegant letters for today, and only had to rewrite 3 letters out of 2 entire pages! We began letter L, both upper and lower case, today.

3) Study prefix (1) and root words (5) for quiz in next lesson! –Janie studied her introduced to prefixes and root words from our last lesson, learning how they can help her better improve her understanding of vocabulary.  She successfully identified the correct meanings of the prefix and all of the root words on her quiz.  We learned 2 new prefixes and 3 new root words today.

4) Read to page 50 of book for English class—Janie explained that she was quite busy this week, so she did not have an opportunity to work on this assignment.  It is important that she complete this reading for her English class, so I encouraged her to read 10 pages before bed each night to help make sure she has completed the book in time to write her book report at the end of the month.

Janie’s At Home Assignments:
1) Study 5 new vocabulary words for spelling and definition quiz in next lesson!
2) Cursive letter L - finish 2 pgs.
3) Study prefix (2) and root words (3) for quiz in next lesson!
4) Read 10 pages of English book per night.
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Note that the format is pretty simple, consistent, and easy to implement if the student has a regular enrichment lesson plan for which you design lessons.  This format is a little trickier for students who have irregular tutoring sessions or who require homework help in a variety of subjects.

Writing these lesson notes takes approximately 10 minutes, so again, it is important to integrate administrative time into your hourly rate; otherwise, you will end up  resenting the amount of time that it takes to complete good lesson notes.  If you end up resenting the time spent, then you could end up resenting the client...just not a good combination.  Set your rates accordingly!