Eleni

My teaching style

I am now a professional tutor, channelling all my time and energy in developing my services, for those that want serious results. I am not a student still figuring out their teaching style or someone doing this after a long day at work as a side income. For every student, I: -Evaluate each student’s level and needs at the beginning of our collaboration and throughout the year. -Make a specific plan for what revision notes and practice questions to provide. -Create exam board specific resources that truly link the theory to how each topic looks like in an exam question and structuring model answers (this is something that is missing, or just not done well enough in popular revision resource websites – I often spot many mistakes in their “model answers”!!) -Set homework after each lesson that I mark and discuss with my student. With the way exam questions are phrased and the highly precise language they want you to use to get full marks, exam technique is as important (if not more so) as studying. Unfortunately, many times students are given quite vague guidelines on how to answer exam questions, like, “be specific”, or “use appropriate keywords”. However, each student is unique and unless one spends time to really pick apart the specific mistakes they make when answering exam questions, it will actually be hard to improve, even when they study a lot! -Regularly communicate with parents & guardians about our progress and areas to focus on. -Familiarise myself with revision resources students have from their school and often merge my own notes with school notes that I deem to be of good quality – I want to work WITH the student, not adding to their confusion by giving them too many notes to study from. -Always include a few minutes of self-reflection for the student (shown in the educational literature to be a powerful tool for creating independent learners), as well as checking in to see how they are handling their stress and anxiety. I’ve been in enough competitive academic institutions to know how hard it can get and can offer ways for students to identify their learning insecurities, so we can face them together! This all takes time, dedication and consistency, which I am able to offer as a full time tutor! Importantly, I take on a limited number of students so as to be able to offer this level of individualised support and attention. Furthermore, I’ve developed my deep insight on the inner workings of each exam board over years of hard work, through my specialised academic training, where I’ve seen what it takes to succeed in higher education. My lesson structure typically consists of explaining and breaking down concepts in a way that is easily understandable, as well as developing student’s exam technique. Unfortunately, students do not always get enough past paper question practice in school, even though it is a highly essential part of revision. All my lessons include exam questions, where I use a step-by-step approach on building model answers. I also give specific feedback to each student on exactly what types of mistakes they tend to make and how they can improve their answers. This has proven to be a very efficient technique to target each student’s problem areas that can’t be tackled simply by reading the textbook over and over!