Make it Click Tuition

I love supporting younger children with phonics and key reading and writing skills. Some of my favourite moments are seeing:

😁The huge smiles on the children's faces when they realise they can read and understand the words/sentences.
😁 Watching children proudly count how many sentences or pages they have read.
😁 Seeing the children's beaming faces (and those of their proud parents) when they tell you they have moved up a reading band.
😁When children realise they can write long words and sentences, purely from sounding out the word and applying their phonics knowledge.
😁 Their confidence grow - whether reading or writing, children start to find it much less daunting and become much more willing to have a go.
😁Draw a picture to match the sentence, answer a written question or follow the instruction because they can read the text.

Happy New Year!!🥳

The new term is already off to a great start. Some of the many things we've covered so far this week:

✅Writing about the Christmas holidays, then proofreading and improving each others' writing.
✅Created a poster warning others about a character.
✅ Learning interesting facts through developing reading and comprehension skills, including measuring the longest ever recorded beard (a huge 17ft and 6 inches!).
✅Creating 2D shapes out of dominoes.
✅Practised times tables in fun ways.
✅ Practised quick ways of adding different numbers, such as looking for number bonds, or adding 10 and then what's left.
✅Explored the relationship between hundreds and thousands, and how to draw and write different numbers.
✅Measured and compared the lengths of different sized snakes.

I love it when you see children use a range of different strategies to help them reach the answer. Here, the child has:

% Realised they can find 14% by finding 10% and 4 lots of 1%
➗Used their place value knowledge (and moving all digits to the right) to divide by 10 and 100.
➕ Partitioned (split up) a number to find an easier way to add it using additions they know
❌ Used their times table and place value knowledge to multiply decimal numbers.

📣One-off, targeted sessions available over half term.

Has your child struggled with a specific concept this half term? Perhaps, at their recent Parents' Evening, their teacher identified that they need a little more support on a particular topic?

I have availability for one-off, or a couple of sessions over half term to help your child succeed in areas they have found tricky this half term and feel more confident going back to school.

I charge £30 for a 45-minute 1:1 session and £35 for a 1-hour 1:1 session. All sessions are tailored to your child's needs and made engaging and fun. Below are some examples of some recent sessions I've had with children.

Please get in touch to book or for more info.

I've been so impressed by children's efforts and enthusiasm when reading and writing over the last few weeks. Some of the many highlights have been:

😂Creating a joke book - complete with Halloween and Christmas jokes (we're now working on adding a riddle section).
✍🏻Some children have worked SO hard on their handwriting (especially letter formation and joining) and I have seen HUGE improvements and HUGE smiles of pride. 😁
📰Created a newspaper with articles of different events that happened in the story.
📝Using our knowledge of characters to write character descriptions.
📖Reading and answering a range of different questions about the text.
🔤Using phonics knowledge to read and spell different words and sentences.
📝Working with a student to research and decide whether we live in a dystopian society and writing an argument explaining their view.

I saw this problem shared on Maths Corner and knew it would be a hit with many of the children I work with. The child I worked with this morning loved solving this and I loved:

👂Hearing them explain their strategy and mathematical thinking.
✖➗Seeing them and apply their times table knowledge.
👀Watching them problem solve.
➗Introducing them to turning a remainder into a decimal when dividing.

When we had solved what each colour was worth, we also came up with our own combinations to work out.

Thank you, Maths Corner, great idea!

There's been lots of brilliant Maths work going on recently. Whether it's adding or subtracting, multiplying and dividing, or even working out tricky fraction questions, we like to 'prove it' by showing the method, drawing or building the problem and ensuring children are able to explain their thinking or method. One of their favourite things to do is also check my work and correct any mistakes I have made - a great way for them to really demonstrate their understanding of a concept!

What's great about working with siblings? Healthy sibling competition! I work with a few siblings and have found they love to:

✅ Do better than each other
✅ Reach the answer quicker or use a better method
✅ Spot if their sibling has made a mistake a correct them! 😂

All of these are great for the learning process and help reinforce concepts for both children.

I've been working with these siblings on short division recently. When they were confident on the process, we played race across the board. Thankfully they both completed the same amount 😅

I had a really great maths session this morning where we focused on embedding understanding of number by:

- building the numbers
- ordering numbers from smallest to largest
- matching the number written in words to the right representations
- recording the number in _ tens and _ ones
- using part, part whole model.

What do you do when the child you're working with is a huge KPop Demon Hunters fan? You make the session all about their favourite character, Rumi.

In our session, the child walked straight up to the whiteboard and drew Rumi. This became the perfect opportunity to practise their phonics in a fun way. We sounded out words of things Rumi had, identified the correct sounds and the child then copied the letters correctly, reading out the words.

I really enjoyed this session (and learning about Rumi!😂), seeing their engagement and watching their confidence grow.