Specialist Maths Tuition for Dyscalculia and Dyslexia
What can I do for your child?
I provide Online Maths lessons for children who don’t find Maths easy and come to me with Maths Anxiety; to empower them to believe in their own ability and to start to thrive in Maths. Providing Specialist Maths Tuition for Dyscalculia and Dyslexia. I am positive and enthusiastic, building on the positives of what they can do rather than dwelling on the negatives. I am passionate about helping struggling learners.
- I help children who often fall through the cracks at school and need a kinder and more compassionate route to success
- Reinforce and support learning that they are doing at school
- Help boost their confidence so that they can succeed
- Empower them to believe in themselves and then use the knowledge and skills I have taught them
I offer engaging and exciting interactive lessons using Zoom, for video, and also BitPaper, which is the market-leading virtual whiteboard. I also share virtual resources through Zoom. This combination of technology is the most robust system.
By using Concrete, Pictorial and Abstract resources and adopting a mastery approach, I can help your child make sense of concepts. I encourage children to have certain resources that I also have, so we can use real-life objects together.
I also use gamification, which is about transforming the learning environment and regular activities into a game. It requires creativity, collaboration and play. I use numerous ways to bring games and game playing into the lessons to promote learning and deepen student understanding of subject matter.
Reasons to choose to have lessons with me?
- Educating your child is a priority to me. I provide Online Tuition. I am a full-time online specialist maths tutor offering a professional bespoke tutoring service; this is what I do as my job. I know exactly what to do to help.
- Does your child struggle with maths? I specialise in teaching children who struggle. I don’t focus on the top most-able pupils who want to achieve even higher marks; I am not an exam factory. I have years of experience with strategies to get the best out of my pupils if maths does not come easy. I can help change how they feel about maths, reduce their maths anxiety, and help them succeed.
- So what is my background? I am a qualified teacher with over 20 years of educational experience. After teaching in Primary Schools and as Head of Maths in a Prep School, I moved to teach Secondary age and taught Maths up to GCSE/IGCSE. This gives me a unique viewpoint in which I have a deep understanding of how each topic builds cyclically upon itself. Very few teachers or, indeed, tutors have this background. This means I can understand and help your child in a way that most tutors don’t know how to.
- Is your child struggling with year-group maths? No matter how many times they try to do the homework task, it doesn’t make any sense to them? I have tried and tested methods of identifying the gaps in children’s knowledge, and I can identify missing knowledge or skills or misconceptions, fill those gaps and raise attainment. I identify, and we go back to topics that they have previously not mastered and that are preventing them from understanding something harder, and I fill in the gaps. This takes experience and specialised knowledge, which I have and many less experienced teachers and tutors don’t have.
- Do you want your child treated as a person, not a commodity? I do not work to any rigid scheme of work but tailor all lessons to your child’s needs using my vast experience. I plan, prepare and teach each child as an individual holistically. Many tutors will teach a set lesson that week to all of the children they teach that are the same age. But I teach them what they need me to teach them rather than a set school curriculum for that month or week, or age group.
- Overall, a happy child learns better. I like to bring humour into my lessons to help pupils relax and engage better with their learning. As I have spent many years working in heavily pastoral roles, I passionately believe in promoting the well-being of a child above all else.
- Some tutors just do homework help with no preparation. That homework help style tutor doesn’t need to charge very much as they can do lots of exam-aged pupils one after another every evening as they don’t do any planning or preparation; they only act on the questions the child wants help with there and then. They compete solely on price with other cut-price tutors. I am most definitely not a homework-help tutor; I teach engaging lessons.
- Your child will relish in my worksheet-free zone and finally start to build a better grasp of mathematical concepts through fun and engaging activities.
- All of these reasons mean that you get what you pay for. If a parent wants a cheap tutor, they get one, but if they want someone who really knows what they are doing and can make a huge difference to the child and help them feel different about maths, they need to pay more, and that is the quality service I provide.
What happens next?
Please contact me initially by email or through the contact option on this website if you would like online tuition.
Due to a busy teaching schedule, I am unlikely to be able to answer your call if you ring me without an appointment. So, please do contact me electronically, and I will get back to you as soon as I am able.
In your email/message, please include the following information so that I can reply and give you the details that you will need:
- Please give details of what time of day and what day you are needing tuition to take place.
- The age of your child.
- Lastly, explain what are your reasons for wanting regular lessons. There are many possible reasons, and they may affect what service I am able to offer.
Depending on your information, I may or may not be able to offer the possibility of a weekly lesson.
I will still contact you and let you know if I can not help you at this time. Hopefully, I will have suitable availability, in which case I will then make arrangements to have a Zoom discussion where we both have the opportunity to ask and explain the situation.
If after this, I have suitable availability and you wish to proceed, we will arrange for your child to have their first lesson. In this first session, I will get to know you and your child. We will discuss any problems and work out a way forward. I will do an initial assessment with your child to get an early feel for their strengths as well as their weaknesses and to start to develop a rapport with them.
There is no obligation to commit to any further lessons unless you wish to.
Fees
All lessons are currently £60 per lesson regardless of age group.
FAQs
Lesson times
The standard lesson time is 45 minutes. Of this time, 45 minutes is teaching time plus 5 minutes to settle and discuss issues with parents.
Prompt starts
Most lessons will end up being in a fixed time-slot the same every week. It is the parent’s responsibility to make sure they have set reminders and the child is ready for the lesson at the set time. After 5 minutes of a no show, I will often send an email or text to check that there isn’t a technical issue such as a lost zoom link. I will send another message via the other method after another 5 minutes. I will remain on the Zoom call for up to a further 5 minutes (15 minutes in total) after which I will leave the meeting room and the lesson is generally forfeited. If you have forgotten the lesson, which does occasionally happen, please reply to my messages and I will stay on the call and start the lesson as soon as you are then able to join the call. The lesson will then be for the remainder of the timeslot. I will not be able to still give you the whole 60 minutes as I will have another pupil straight after.
Parent involvement
Especially for younger children, I would expect a parent to set up the video call and stay within earshot in case of technical issues so they can step in if needed and help their child. I usually use Zoom and BitPaper which are pretty robust and we have few technical issues, but it does still happen sometimes. More common are things like they have closed the window by mistake and don’t know how to get it back.
Children tend to respond better to the lessons if they are left to engage with me without parental help. But the first time we meet it will be a session where both you and your child are on the Zoom call with me and we all talk and get to know each other. I will introduce teaching and informal assessing for me to gauge the best level for me to come in with or the first proper lesson. We will play some maths games and this enables me to see how they cope but also they are learning to click, drag and drop and draw and write on the screen with me. This may need parental support this first time especially if they are younger.
Generally, my advice after this introductory lesson is for you to be in the same room or within earshot, but not sat next to them.
For some children depending on what has been pre-agreed, parents will need to print off and then scan and send back to me work that has been set for the week. This can be sent back by email or WhatsApp, both systems work well for me. This work needs to be sent back to me at the latest by 6 pm on the night before the lesson for me to act upon it for my planning and preparation for their lesson.
Technical issues
Especially for younger children, I would expect a parent to set up the video call and stay within earshot in case of technical issues so they can step in and help their child if needed. I usually use Zoom and BitPaper which are pretty robust and we have few technical issues, but it does still happen sometimes. More common are things like they have closed the window by mistake and don’t know how to get it back.
I am not responsible for the quality of the broadband connection. I have super fast broadband and various extra technical setups my end to prevent any internet difficulty originating from me.
I use a high spec gaming PC, super fast broadband, and an Ethernet cable not a WiFi connection. I have an external podcasting microphone, speakers, dual monitors and a Wacom graphics tablet so that I can write on the screen with a pen not a mouse. This is the best set of kit that I can have.
If the bandwidth on the call isn’t good, the first thing I ask the pupil to do is to switch off their camera, this often fixes the issue and we continue with just sound for the lesson. If all else fails we can keep the BitPaper open and make a low tech phone call for our audio. If a laptop can be connected directly to the router rather than by WiFi this will help too.
The best kit that pupils can have is to use a PC or laptop. An external microphone, not the laptop inbuilt one (which tend to be terrible quality) will really help both me and your child be able to hear and understand each other clearly. Most pupils use a headset so they can hear me and speak to me easily. Others have the sound coming out of the laptop so that the parents can also hear the conversation but use headphones for the microphone.
There are some functionality issues with Chromebooks, so if possible I would ask you not to use it for lessons. I am unable to hand over control to the child in zoom so they end up being more passive which isn’t ideal.
The least ideal device is an iPad. Using an iPad means I have to do lots of things in a different and not very good way as they are much less able to interact with the lesson.
I really recommend the use of a real laptop (not Chromebook) or PC for lessons, it just means that the lessons work more smoothly and we aren’t fighting technical issues all the way through and I can get on and do what I do best – teach!
Safeguarding issues
For safeguarding reasons for children under 18 it is expected that an adult will remain in the house with them for the duration of their online lesson. They shouldn’t be left alone with me on the other end of the call. Also, all pupils should be fully dressed when on a video call.
Payment
All payments should be by bank transfer. You will be given my bank details and will be able to set me up on your banking app as a regular payee with a Standing Order.
Unless payment has been received, no further lessons will take place. Agreements can be arranged with Local Authorities or charities to pay in arrears by monthly invoice.
From June 2023 all new pupils will pay under a new monthly payment scheme via standing order. Details to be confirmed at time of booking.
Lesson links
You will be sent a link for the Zoom call and usually, that link stays the same for your child every week. Please keep this link safely so you can find it each week.
All Zoom calls can only be entered through a waiting room, this means that no one else can Zoom-bomb the call.
You child will have a series of BitPapers that are just for them. They each have a unique URL that opens it. BitPaper is a virtual interactive whiteboard that allows us both to write and draw on it at the same time. It is designed especially for online tutoring so has many features that we need but wouldn’t be necessary for a classroom setting and visa versa. This system enables us to have very engaging and fully interactive not passive teaching and learning. We will work on one BitPaper until it is full and then I will create a new one or them and we will continue with that one instead.
To save time please set a bookmark for the BitPaper so that it can be easily opened before the start of the lesson. BitPapers can be converted into pdfs to print if required.
