Joshua Dillon

I first started tutoring when I was elected to run the maths clinics in the Lower sixth, where students would come during their lunch break, seeking assistance with tricky assignments, assessment reviews, or more general questions about areas that they did not fully understand. The main goal of these sessions would be to to help the students reach the correct conclusions on their own, with assistance from the tutor. The format of these sessions depended on how the student best responded, be that through written examples, online exercises, or through a more lecture style approach. I prefer the more traditional route of Explanation, Examples, Practice. This is where an explanation of the topic is given with diagrams to support the explanation, then example questions are worked through by the tutor and student, then the student practices and seeks help only when they are stuck. However, I have also found that in other situations other methods work better, and it depends on how the student reacts to the stimulus. In terms of the content of the lesson, I want the student to come away from the lesson feeling as though they have fully mastered the topic, and thus I only feel comfortable moving on when a student is confident on the topic before moving forwards. The materials used in the sessions is tailored completely to the topic being tackled and is prepared in advance, also I've found that revisiting topics in later assignments helps to promote long term understanding the methods used in that area of problem solving.