Rob

I am a qualified, practising maths teacher specialising in secondary maths up to GCSE level I'm fully familiar with the curriculum and passionate about inspiring young people to see the relevance of maths in real-life, and how it can help them in their future careers.

Tutoring Experience

I've been teaching maths for 17 years in and around Sheffield. I currently have students from year 7 to year 11.

Tutoring Approach

I strongly believe that people learn best by doing, so rather than me doing all the talking, my lessons are very much focused on the student working through problems with myself as a guide pointing them in the right direction and filling in knowledge gaps when necessary. This builds independence and a sense of achievement when they complete a question themselves.

For students who lack confidence and find it all rather daunting, I can break it down into simple steps to build up understanding and confidence in a fun and relaxed environment. Many students are reluctant to put up their hands and ask a question in front of a class. It is much less intimidating in an informal and friendly one-to-one situation.

Similarly, for those who are already on or exceeding their targets, I can give the extra boost and help build a deeper understanding to make sure they succeed.

For those approaching important exams we will focus on exam technique, in particular, how to set out answers in a logical step-by-step way. This is something that is rarely taught well in schools, and having marked many exam papers it can be very frustrating trying to follow all the steps a student has gone through when answering more complex questions. Examiners are only human and when an answer is set out clearly it makes their life easier and can get them on your side.

My lessons are 50 minutes long and I am currently doing all my tutoring online using a shared online whiteboard that we can both write on. To use this you will need a graphics tablet which plugs into your computer. The one I use and recommend is the One by Wacom Mini which can be bought from Amazon for around £31. Any other similar graphics tablet is fine but I don’t recommend writing with a finger on a conventional tablet. I don’t charge for the first lesson as some of this will inevitably be spent setting everything up, so this partially offsets the cost of the tablet. If you want to do a couple of lessons before committing to buying it we can manage but you will need to purchase one going beyond this.

Audio quality is much better if you have a headset or earphones but if you don't have these just use the computer’s built in microphone and speakers.

After the lesson you will be able to access the whiteboard if you wish to review the lesson later.