Josie

I have been tutoring maths since 2008, and home educated my two children who gained 16 IGCSes and GCSEs between them. I have successfully worked with a wide range of ability levels, from students who came for tutoring because they were afraid that they were going to fail in every subject, to level 9 students.

Tutoring Experience

The students that I have tutored range from young primary to adult learners. Many were GCSE students, and I am particularly successful at helping struggling students to gain good passes. I work successfully with a whole range of ability from dyscalculia through to high achievers. I can support school learning, or take home educated students through from no maths at all to examination level. I do not require any prior maths experience from my students. I have taught IGCSE, GCSE, Common Entrance, SATs, adult functional maths, and Common Core (with American students).

Tutoring Approach

I help students to find the places where they are stuck or not understanding, and first work with those. It often happens in school that students miss a key explanation, whether through absence or simply through the teacher not ensuring that they have fully understood before they move on, and from then onwards the effects of this will multiply. If they can put good foundations in place then they find that they understand far more than they thought they could, and they can build on this more quickly and easily than they ever thought possible. I have a thorough understanding of how all the maths topics fit together, and what knowledge is required in order to understand each one. My lessons are a combination of helping the student to learn the topic, and ensuring that they are not missing anything fundamental that underpins it. I take care to only build forward in a way that is linked to the student's individual learning style, and to other things that they already understand, so that the steps are small and incremental. The most frequent comment that I hear is "You make it so easy!"