High School Tutor Training Curriculum for Students Serving as Tutors to their Special Needs Peers

Peer Tutor Handbook: A Curriculum for High School Students Serving as Peer Tutors to Students with Special Needs is a peer tutor training guide listed in the peer tutoring resource library and certainly worth exploring!

Originally published in 1995, the document was written as an instructional guide for the high schools that participated in a peer tutoring program approved by the Tennessee Department of Education. The document was written by Carolyn Hughes, Sarah Lorden, Carol Guth, Stacey Scott and Judith Presley of Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College.

This tutor training curriculum serves as a teaching guide for a high school course in which non-disabled students receive training and serve as peer tutors and role models for their peers with special needs for one class period each day. The comprehensive handbook does more than provide instruction on how to train peer tutors, but also contains sample peer tutoring activities, pertinent documents such as tutor schedule and evaluation forms, as well as detailed information to help peer tutors learn about specific disability areas such as autism, speech and language disorders, learning disabilities etc.

So, what can teachers expect to find in this classroom teaching resource?

• Course description along with peer tutor qualifications and requirements
• Description of tutees’ special education classes
• List of benefits of the program to peer tutors
• Sample peer tutoring activities
• Description of tutor roles along with guidelines on motivation, the tutorial relationship, techniques of tutoring, setting goals, and suggestions for getting to know the tutee
• Peer tutor training ideas and sample activities
• Peer tutoring program related documents such as tutor schedule forms, tutor reflection and evaluation forms, and peer tutor observation schedules
• An “Introduction to Special Education Services” section which covers topics such as legislation, definitions of key terms, discipline, and misconceptions about individuals with disabilities
• Sections containing detailed information on the following disability areas: mental retardation, learning disabilities, visual impairments, hearing impairments, speech and language disorders and autism

You can download this curriculum from the Education Resources Information Center website. 

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