Claudia

I am a qualified teacher and registered educational psychologist. As well as my doctorate in educational psychology I have a masters in psychology, I am graded an outstanding teacher and I have received a first class grading for my degree, masters and PGCE. I have taught for five years and am now a registered Educational Psychologist following completion of a doctorate in child, community and educational psychology. This means I have knowledge of psychology from gcse level right up to what will now be doctorate level. I have done private tutoring throughout my training and teaching for gcse and a-level students and find this very rewarding. I have been successful in building students confidence and improving their academic performance in all instances. I will mostly be available during evenings. I undertook my teacher training at CCCU which is known for its teacher training. I then completed my NQT year at Harris Chafford Hundred, a teaching school which is an extremely high achieving non selective school and has high numbers of SEN and EAL students. I am therefore able to work with students a wide range of abilities and have trained with the best. I have also taught on a psychology access course for adults and therefore believe I would be able to assist with understanding content and working towards assignments on most adult courses up to and including undergraduate degree level. I have found that tutoring on zoom in these times has been just as effective as face to face tutoring and this is how I am mostly tutoring these days. My current clients have been happy to continue with the tutoring virtually and there have been no issues with this.

Tutoring Experience

I taught for 5 years across 3 Harris schools (Rainham, Riverside and Chafford Hundred) and in that time I have taught all secondary year groups. I specialise in OCR GCSE Psychology and AQA A-level psychology but I have taught Edexcel A-level and have tutored WJEC a-level (currently only taking on AQA a level students or edexcel gcse). I am an experienced teacher and as well as the usual requirement of PGCE training in education I have an undergraduate degree in education. Whilst teaching I was assistant achievement director for KS4 at Harris Chafford Hundred. I was promoted to this role because of my relationships with students, my work ethic and my ability to produce good results. Each year a large number of my psychology students achieved 7-9 and A-A* grades. At a-level we had 100% pass rate for psychology and 30-35% consistently achieving A-A*. Aside from teaching psychology something that I have specialised in whilst teaching, is the psychology behind memory and revision. This is something that I have delivered CPD sessions to the entire staff body on and also something that is regularly referred to in my lessons. As a result of this I was often asked to work with GCSE and A-level students one to one on understanding how to revise effectively. My enhanced understanding of cognition and learning from my doctorate training only better equips me to support with this.

Tutoring Approach

My approach to tutoring is client centred. At Harris I was well practiced in tailoring individual or small group intervention sessions to meet an individual or groups needs. Through understanding an individual's misconceptions, strengths and barriers to learning I am able to cater a session to the individual, building their confidence and improving their academic performance. My doctorate level learning of Educational psychology makes me well positioned for helping students beyond just learning the curriculum content. It also means I have specialist understanding of working with students with additional educational or social, emotional and mental health needs. In the past some some of the areas I have helped students with are revision technique, confidence, exam technique, understanding complex content, writing essays and learning key terminology. Terminology and revision technique are both key areas in psychology as the courses always have a large amount of content and a huge number of subject specific terminology. Research methods and statistics is also an area that students often struggle with and is an area that I specialise in. The aforementioned areas are therefore likely to feature in the tuition sessions but only if they suit the needs of the learner. I will always spend the first session assessing a students current understanding in order to cater subsequent sessions to their needs. I also adapt my sessions each time based on what worked best for the student in the previous session to ensure every session is more effective than the last. I have countless teaching techniques and resources to draw upon and I am flexible with my tutoring to guarantee the session has a positive impact.