Connie Ferrey

I like to make all my lessons student lead and not too formal. I start every session with a chat to find out how you're getting on generally with your studies and if there is anything you are struggling with. I don't tend to plan my lessons unless the student would like me to, in which case I'm more than happy to do so.

I think its really important to make making mistakes less scary - its ok to get things wrong or not always know the answer. So, to do this I think its nice to just get comfortable talking about the topics so when it comes to doing practice questions and exams all the language feels really familiar. In the lessons I like to start by explaining a topic on the board and maybe throwing in a few questions we can think about together while doing so to gauge how you are getting on. Then we can do some exam questions together on that topic, or if anything snags while I'm explaining we can look over that in more detail.

Also repetition can really help (I know, I used to hate it too!). It can seem dull going over the same stuff when you're studying, especially when you are already struggling with the topic itself, so I like to try and make it fun. For example we could start every session seeing how much of the Krebs cycle we can remember or rapid fire the transition element colours at a random point in every lesson. Then once it becomes routine and you feel confident with it, it becomes a really fun part of the lesson where you can show off just how much you can remember.

In my Online lesson I use PowerPoint and screen share what I am writing. I start every lesson with a blank page, which gives us the freedom to talk about any topics you want. If we do practice exam questions together I will share the exam PDF on my screen and if we get stuck on any questions we can go back to the PowerPoint slide and work through how to answer it together. In my in-person teaching I like to use a whiteboard. Again, we start the session with a blank page and then depending on what you want to do we can go from there. Also if you ever have any specific questions, maybe from your lessons at school or a past exam you struggled with we can go through those. You can send them to me before the lesson and I can print them out.