We start the first lesson with getting to know each other. The foundation of effective tutoring is trust: students need to feel safe to make mistakes and open to learn from those mistakes. So in the first 10 minutes we use ice-breakers and questions that help us assess how a student learns. We look at their learning habits and current skills to establish the best way to support them.
Then, depending on their learning goals, we dive in.
We give students an age-appropriate text which they read and analyse on the spot. This discussion gives us valuable insight into their level of confidence, how well they can read between the lines, and how much support they need with the more technical aspects of language.
Students then write an analytical paragraph about the text. Some students are great at expressing themselves verbally but struggle to write clearly. This exercise reveals this gap. Language analysis is the basis on which everything else is built in the English curriculum, so identifying missing pieces here is important.
Finally, students are prompted to write a short story. Half of the English Language GCSE is about writing creatively, and this task shows us how confident students are at using the tools they usually analyse in the writing of others.
By the end of the first lesson, we are in a good position to create a learning plan. We take hobbies, passions, and interests into account when we create the personalised learning plan because if an hour a week is going to make a difference, it won’t be through teeth-grinding boredom. This plan is not set in stone, though – as confidence grows and understanding deepens, the plan adapts. The final goal, however, doesn’t change: becoming an independent, self-assured learner.
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