Miss Imogen Taylor

I check to see what students are already capable of and what they are struggling with, and then work through problems on the difficult topics, before getting students to work through them with me, leading to the student working through them on their own. It is exciting to see students enabled where previously they struggled!

I use a range of resources. Some are from text books, some are online, and some of them I make up myself as we go along, in order to ensure that the problems are the right level for where the student is working at right then.

I also use past papers, to give experience of what the exams will be like, thus helping students to overcome nerves, gain in confidence, and gain experience of the type of questions they will face in the real exams, and also understand what the examiners are looking for in the solutions. For example, sometimes it is helpful to check the mark-scheme of past papers, to see where they can gain or lose marks. Sometimes students know and understand the basics, but lose easy marks through uncertainty as to how much detail is required, or by falling into common pitfalls.

Going over past papers helps the student to utilise a range of knowledge, as they can see a question as being about volume and then they find they are doing calculus. Or they think they are looking at statistics, and then hey find they need to solve some algebra ... which they are capable of if they had expected it!