Heather

I have been teaching maths for 7 years and I am currently the head of KS3 maths but also teach KS4. I have a first class honours BEd Primary Education (Maths Specialism) degree but quickly transitioned to secondary school teaching. All my previous tutor students have passed their GCSE maths exam including one particular student where I improved her grade from 1 to a 4 in one year. I similarly helped progress a student from a grade 7 to a grade 9 in maths.

I ensure I build a positive relationship with all students I teach to help improve their confidence in themselves and it makes them feel more comfortable in lessons so are more open to sharing their difficulties and asking questions which can be a big barrier to their learning.

I break harder topics into smaller, more manageable steps for the students to reduce their cognitive load so they find learning easier and they can remember the learning long-term. I use a maths mastery approach where questions on the same topic are asked in different ways and contexts to encourage students to understand the content and apply it to other contexts rather than using repetitive practice which has been proven to be ineffective when it comes to long-term learning. Each question asked aims to challenge the students further or link areas of maths together to help retrieval of information. A big barrier in students achieving lower grades in maths is their ability to recall information alongside their understanding of basic concepts so these are areas I focus on.

Being reactive and adaptable is a key part of tutoring and the privilege to teach students one-to-one really enables me to focus on their specific needs and if I need to stop a lesson to revise simple skills needed to access the higher content then I am able to and this has shown to have massive impact.

I look forward to hearing from you soon and am very happy to answer any questions,
Heather