Debra Foyer Private Tutoring

Take a look at some of my client reviews as we near the end of the 2025 academic year!✨ Contact me if you're looking for an English or Mathematics tutor for your child in 2026.

Thanks for this glowing review Deena! I look forward to continued learning in 2024!

(Topic: Multiplication, Year: 3 & 4)

Back to school and back to Mathematics! As students get better at their timestables through skip counting, they need more efficient ways to answer more complex multiplication questions involving two digit numbers. Taking the examples shown in the image, repeatedly adding 3 lots of 19 is a viable strategy but this becomes time consuming and will likely lead to an error if the student attempts to add 18 lots of 27. In comes the area model! Students are quite often surprised at how quickly and accurately they’re able to answer 2 x 2 digit multiplication questions once given this fun and friendly visual strategy!

(Topic: Fractions, Year: 6)
Fractions is a notoriously difficult topic. If you ask your child what their least favourite maths topic is, you’re likely to hear ‘fractions!’ This is because in early Primary, fractions are just friendly slices of pizza or pie but this topic can quickly get out of hand in later years as it becomes more advanced. A solid grasp of what proper fractions, improper fractions and mixed numerals are is essential in order to undertake questions involving fractional equivalence to add, subtract or multiply fractions. Taking this topic slow and steady and building understanding and confidence is key to student readiness to delve even further with fraction concepts in High School.

(Topic: Area and Perimeter, Year: 6)
With a few helpful tips to guide students with problem solving, students begin to find these types of area and perimeter questions really enjoyable to solve! These questions require the ability to convert between units of length and utilise multiple operations (addition, subtraction and multiplication) towards problem solving.

(Subject: English, Year: 6)

Today we’re looking at sourcing evidence from a key text (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) as support and justification for inferences we make about characters. Finding quotations (and supporting page numbers) from any text is a skill my student will continue learning throughout high school and well into adulthood. This evidence is what strengthens our understanding of any given text as well as our written response to questions or assignments where we can demonstrate deep understanding of the text.

How do the Dursleys feel about the Potters? Great texts are complex and the answers to these questions may be woven throughout and not explicitly stated (that’s what makes them interesting!) After we read the assigned pages, we’ll take a closer look at the text and highlight supporting evidence that we’ll then discuss and use as justification for inferences we’ll make about their relationship. The skills my student will learn will help her as she moves towards independently answering any questions on any text moving forward.

I'm ready to get stuck into this fun topic with my Thursday afternoon student! (Topic: Three-Dimensional Space, Year: 3)

Pyramids and prisms get their name from their base face(s). A pyramid has one base face while a prism has two. All the other non-base faces of a pyramid are triangular while all the other non-base faces of a prism are rectangular.

This pyramid has one base face (a hexagon) and this prism has two base faces (a hexagon on the top and on the bottom). The nets clearly show that all the other non-base faces of the pyramid are triangular while all the other non-base faces of the prism are rectangular.

We have a hexagonal pyramid and a hexagonal prism!

A sneak peak into my Wednesday afternoon tutoring session! (Topic: Length, Year: 6)

When converting a larger unit to a smaller one, you multiply because you will need more of the smaller unit to account for the same length.
E.g. 5cm = 5 x 10 (b/c there are 10mm in 1cm) = 50mm
Just move the decimal once to the right to multiply by 10.

When converting a smaller unit to a larger one, you divide because you will need less of the larger unit to account for the same length.
E.g. 95cm = 95 ÷ 100 (b/c there are 100cm in 1m) = 0.95m
Just move the decimal twice to the left to divide by 100.