Inês André

I try to make my lessons as dynamic as possible, because I like to adapt them to the students unique needs and preferences. Hence, before each session (usually a day or two before), I’ll ask students what they’d like to go through during the session so I have time to plan the perfect lesson. Most sessions are via zoom, where I will share the link the previous day to the session. During the session I like to share screen, showing the student the question we’re doing and the working out answers which I’ll be writing as we go along - and don’t worry, I’ll share these notes at the end of the lesson! Some activities which we usually do in sessions include: doing deep topic reviews, past papers, topic questions, and going over homework.
Furthermore, I am a firm believer that setting a short homework task is great to see if students can apply what we did during the lesson without help, so I usually set some task for them to do which I can then correct and we can go over in the next session. This is a method which worked for me when I was a student, but which has also helped my students go from a B to an A.
I believe that there are no silly mistakes, but if one should be made I encourage my students to make them during the lessons: we want to go through all the silly mistakes so that you don’t make them during exams! I always encourage my students no matter what, so something I always make sure to teach them is the “Three Fractions of Success”. The “Three Fractions of Success” are three fractioned scores I make my students calculate when they finish any question based task. They’re made to encourage students and remind them to keep motivated, as they show the three essential perspectives for success in tests. These fractions include:
- Total fraction of the task: how many points did you get out of all the points.
- Time fraction: out of all the questions you passed/read through how many points did you get. An example would be that you did a past paper with nine pages and got to page 6, then you’d do a fraction based on the total amount of points you could have gotten from that two thirds of the paper.
- Your knowledge fraction: this fraction is for based on how many points did you get out of all the questions which you answered (questions which you left blank are excluded).
Last but not least, I am a great appreciator for feedback. So at the end of each session we’ll have a relaxed time for feedback. Usually you’ll hear me ask “1 out of 10 where 1 is you’re super confused and hate this, and 10 is I’ve got this I’m a superstar - which number are you”. This allows me to understand how my student is feeling so I can adapt the next few sessions to make sure that they’re at a steady 10. Then I’ll ask students whether they liked the session, if they wanted to do something different, and whether they have any last comments.