What is the average format of a tutoring session!?

[Manana]

In my own limited secondhand experience, the tutees have completed the "papers" at home, and the tutor session has been about working on identified "weaknesses" or new material, plus techniques for saving time and building up speed and accuracy. The tutor sessions also include something "fun" but linked in some way to the learning.

I think some children are tutored in groups, and then probably they work through more papers during the tutorial time than children who are one to one tutored. Personally I wouldn't want to pay for a child to sit there ploughing through questions on their own, but I guess if it doesn't happen at home for some reason then it's worth paying for.


The very specific benefit that some tutors may have over and above DIY - and only some tutors have this advantage - is that they invigilate the actual exams and thus get to see and quickly work through the real papers themselves.

Sure you'll get lots of experience to share on the Essex forum.

Thank you-that's interesting stuff. I know one of my ex-colleagues does 11+ tutoring, so I will have to see if she has any tips, too. I didn't want to post this again in the Essex forum as I know a lots of people just read 'view new/unread posts' and don't want to see if twice! I wonder if the mods would kindly consider moving this thread into the Essex forum for me?

[scarlett]

I'm not in your area and we don't do an english paper...but for the maths, NVR and VR I bought the Bond " How To Do " range which are really helpful and go over each topic . I covered more general maths and english with DS1 up to 6-9 months before...also working through the Bond workbooks, then he started on the papers.I shall be doing the same with DS2.I think it's only the algebra which they haven't covered at school. It depends how bright your son is.Both my 2 boys needed/need the basic building blocks tweaked a bit before concentrating on the 11 plus work, but DS2 is actually enjoying the Bond books. I also have the CGP key stage 2 workbooks which goes through all the topics needed. I found it more productive to look at say, finding areas and perimetres or fractions and then really getting to grips with that topic, going over mistakes checking at the diner table..ooh do you remember how to find an area of a shape and then move on to the next topic.If that's all done thoroughly then the practice papers should just be about reinforcement , marking the answer boxes correctly and timings.

[mitasol]

I wonder if the mods would kindly consider moving this thread into the Essex forum for me?

Your thread has been moved.

[moved]

I used to set three papers per week when all skills had been covered. I expected these to be completed and marked at home and problems looked at by the child and parent. The sessions we shared were to train/educate the pupil in the skills necessary and those that were weak.

I only ever took one pupil in year 4 and we started on basic English as his parents were not native speakers. Grammar exercise, spellings weekly, etc. He would have been well prepared for last year's paper.

[crgsmum]

We didn't hire a tutor but I spent a lot of time preparing our DS at home.

First, VR is worth half the marks and every so often they drop a format of questions in that has not been used before. We looked at every kind of VR we could find and then we worked on strategies to deal with any types of question my DS was struggling with. Once he had good technique I worked with him on timing. There are some good Bond bite-size for this.

In Maths I covered the year 6 and where relevant 7 sylabus with him over the course of year 5. We had access to CSSE papers going back ten years so I made a list of maths topics covered and made sure he was familiar with the concepts and had plenty of practise on them all. Timing was never an issue for him with maths.

For English it is trickier. Fortunately my DS will read and read and read so I got him to plough through a lot of Usborne classics. Also, grabbed any opportunity for vocab development. He did all and every paper I had and Bond do some for 13 year olds (can't remember exactly what they were and we had a big bonfire after the exam) so he did these too. We also got lucky, during half term I was looking through all the past papers and realised there wasn't a Dickens in there so got him to read some "Christmas Carol" and "Oliver Twist" just to get used to the language, the text that year was "Bleak House".

Anyway he's just finished a wonderful, happy, succesful year at CRGS which just shows you can do it at home with a little bit of planning, as much fun as you can squeeze in and lots of love.