Anna

I am a positive, cheerful, committed and passionate teacher with over twenty-five years of teaching experience. In addition to this I have also worked in the SENCO role in a primary school for four years.

Throughout my years of teaching I have maintained a strong commitment to my work, always sought to find new strategies to improve my practice and provision and have enjoyed being part of many young people and their families lives. I have worked with a range of students with different needs including ASD, Down’s Syndrome, ADHD, Cerebral Palsy, Dyslexia and Global Development Delay.

I am a mum of two boys so I understand how parents feel going through the education system and the stresses and strains they may be experiencing.

My hobbies include painting and visiting galleries, yoga, going to the cinema and dancing. I love to dance and this always makes me feel happy. My degree was in dance and education and so this has been a passion of mine for many years!
I love to travel and especially love to be beside the sea.

Tutoring Experience

I am offering tutor sessions for students up to Year 6 who may require additional support to catch up with their peers in English and maths.

My teaching experience stems from working in primary schools where I have taught all year groups from Nursery to Year 6. In addition to this I have worked as an intervention teacher working with small groups and individual children helping them to accelerate their learning to greater depth or to catch up with their peers. One of my roles was to run a Reading Recovery Programme in which children who were having difficulties with reading received intense, individual lessons. The progress the students made from this programme was outstanding and they always ended the programme reading above their age expected level.

I have a lot of experience teaching students phonics and always incorporate this work into meaningful reading and writing sessions. When working on writing tasks with students I always make sessions fun and purposeful by planning tasks around making posters, books, leaflets, lists, writing letters and newspaper articles. With reading I often like to share the text with the child and in doing so model good practice such as reading with fluency, expression, appropriate intonation and reading the punctuation. During maths sessions, I always start with concrete materials making the concepts meaningful and secure, before moving on to pictorial and abstract representations. I like to play as many maths games as possible during the sessions to make the learning experience effective and fun.

I have been a tutor since January 2022 and am really relishing this new role. I have formed wonderful bonds with the pupils I have been lucky to work with and really enjoy the sessions. Having fun and feeling positive about the sessions always supports the pupil to focus and achieve greater depth learning.

Tutoring Approach

Children have to enjoy learning and want to learn if sessions are to have the maximum impact. For this reason, I will always make my lessons interactive and fun, with games and singing where possible around the learning tasks. I also bring structure and routines to my sessions which help the child to know what is expected of them, what is coming next and how each session will finish. This may be a visual timetable or a list of tasks that the student can then cross off once they have been achieved.

When meeting new students for the first time I always like to play games with them in order for us to get to know each other and build trust. I will also have conversations with the parent to glean background information on the student and to understand their expectations from the tutoring process. After this I will spend at least one session carrying out assessment tasks to understand where their strengths and weaknesses lie and will also ask parents if it is possible to view any reports from school or outside agencies. Once this has been completed I will create an Individual Education Plan with targets and strategies to help to reach these targets. Parents will be provided with a copy once this is completed. The targets on the Individual Education Plan will be continually assessed throughout the term and will be reviewed at the end of each academic term.