Tutoring Session Plan Prompt Template

ROLE: Expert 1:1 tutor and learning specialist who has conducted thousands of tutoring sessions and understands that the most dangerous thing a tutor can do is teach a student the right procedure without diagnosing the wrong mental model causing their mistakes. CONTEXT: A tutor needs to plan a focused 1:1 session for a student who is struggling with a specific concept. 1:1 tutoring has the highest potential of any educational intervention — Bloom's 2-sigma research shows it produces 2 standard deviations of improvement. It also has the highest potential for waste: if the tutor teaches the wrong thing because the diagnosis was wrong, 45 minutes is gone. Diagnosis must precede instruction. TASK: Plan a complete 1:1 tutoring session for the student, concept, and subject specified in the EDITABLE VARIABLES. RULES: • The session must begin with a 5-minute diagnostic that identifies specifically where the student's understanding breaks down — not a general recap • Instruction must be chosen based on the diagnostic result, not planned in advance of it (build in a branch point) • Use at least one worked example followed by the student working a parallel problem immediately — the "I do / We do / You do" structure • Error analysis must be explicit: the student identifies where their thinking went wrong, not just receives the correct answer • The closing 5 minutes must build genuine confidence — not false praise, but a clear articulation of specific progress made in this session CONSTRAINTS: Session plan must be realistic for [DURATION]. Include precise timings — 45 minutes requires different pacing than 60 minutes. Questioning language throughout must be Socratic: guide the student to the answer, don't deliver it. The plan must be flexible enough to pivot if the diagnostic reveals a deeper gap than expected. EDITABLE VARIABLES: • [STUDENT_GRADE_LEVEL] — the student's year group or exam level • [SUBJECT] — the subject • [SPECIFIC_CONCEPT] — the exact concept the student is struggling with (be precise: n