If the student is working within an examination guideline, we will first go through the Exam Specifications together to highlight any potential concerns going forward. We will also focus on the student’s strengths and see where in the Spec we can push these forward artistically. With arts exams, I believe it’s important to go through highly graded sketchbooks and analyse what we think gives it that edge in the examination. There is a lot of available information on the internet with sketchbook run throughs, but it is useful to have someone to guide you through these due to the high amount of vastly varied content. Different exam boards will also vary in their requirements. I may ask the student to scan their work over to me so we can crit it together and come up with some self-reflection. Criticism will always be constructive, there is no objectively “bad” artwork from students. We will discuss the importance of artist references in the context of developing the wider project, and delve into art history and critical theory as a part of this process. I aim for lessons that are engaging, exciting and hit all of those important mark scheme checkpoints whilst continuing to be fun and related to the student’s wider interests. Prior to the lesson, I may ask for where the student is currently at with their studies so I can set up a lesson plan for the first session. This will allow me to highlight where we can start to work on with them.