Clarice Ana Mihele

I motivate students by seeking an aspect of the subject that they find enjoyable and setting tasks related to this. For English, as a creative humanities subject, it is not difficult to find themes or areas of enjoyment, even to those who perhaps find it more difficult. I believe that finding an area of enjoyment in the subject aids the student in understanding it more, resulting in improvement.

I have a creative approach to teaching, where I identify the student's strengths and weaknesses (usually close language analyses and essay writing) and work together with the student, encouraging them to take the lead in identifying language techniques and making them feel confident about new texts, not just familiar texts (as unseen texts are an important part of the exams in both the GCSE and A-Level papers). In this way, I encourage the student to become an active reader rather than a passive reader.

For essay writing, I usually ask for examples of their own essays where I will go through them in my own time and during the lesson, again encouraging the student to identify strengths and weakness (this is key in ensuring that they know what and how the exam board expects them to answer questions). I then provide a sample essay and may ask them to write an essay every few weeks or so to review progress.

have taken on two GCSE pupils who are predicted to achieve an 8 in their GCSE, one previously being predicted a 6. I typically mould lessons to students' progress and development, looking at particular places where improvement is necessary and spending more time in development of essays (an area many pupils struggle with).