Lesley Dixon Tutoring

I can’t believe it’s a year since I left full time teaching. I’ve loved tutoring over the past year and am looking forward to starting again properly in September.
I don’t have many spaces in the afternoon/evenings, but do have availability during the day.

After my trip yesterday I thought about the number of children I've taught who have never been to a museum until a class visit. Lots of parents worry about their children not behaving, or not being interested in a dusty old museum.
Have a look at my tips for making visits enjoyable for both you and your children.

When I made the decision to leave teaching there were a couple of things I promised myself.

1. A membership of the
2. To spend time developing my writing and drawing ✍️ ideas.

So today I’m combining them and am here at the British Museum exploring some galleries I haven’t visited very often. A membership also means I can spend some time in the member’s room enjoying a coffee and a sandwich, while making some notes and sketches for my story ideas.

Look out later for some child friendly tips on visiting museums and places of interest 😃

It's that time of year again 🙂Here are some tips to make life easier going back to school.

Loving being out in the open air. Here are two of the 🐿 gang 🙂

I’m doing a fantasy writing course and have been finding it difficult to find inspiration at home today. So I came out to my local park.
So far I’ve met:
A gang of three mischievous squirrels 🐿🐿🐿
A tree 🌳 with a bad attitude
And two magpies who looked like they were up to no good 😊
Inspiration sorted I think.

It’s always good to take a break when we’re struggling to study our work. Just a few minutes doing something else really helps get your brain back into gear. This goes for children as well, regular breaks when studying will help them concentrate and make learning more enjoyable 😃

Recently I made a rather lopsided birthday cake 🎂
Interesting though how much maths is involved in baking. Another fun way to engage kids in learning in real life situations.

1) multiplication - I doubled the ingredients
2) weighing/counting everything out
3) dividing/fractions - how many pieces do we need, how can we cut it fairly?
4) logic - is it reasonable to put 80 candles on the cake? What could we do to represent 80? We decided on 1 candle = 10 years

I'm offering 1:1 tutoring sessions in English and Maths, Monday to Thursday. If your child is going into years 3,4,5 or 6 and you are interested in booking please let me know by clicking on the email link and I will get back to you.

If you have any questions please put them in the comments and I'll answer them as soon as I can 🙂

I have been a primary school teacher for the past 14 years, 21 years in education. I’ve loved working as a class teacher and seeing those light bulb moments and the enthusiasm for learning amongst my pupils has been inspiring. However, it’s time to move on and I have decided to make tutoring my main focus.

Before being a teacher I worked as a Learning Mentor for 7 years, it was a job I loved and one that meant I was working with a wide range of children from different backgrounds. For all of them the most important thing was to breakdown the barriers that were preventing them from learning. This 1:1 work gave me a great insight into how children think and feel. What works for one may not work for another. It’s about looking at the individual.

That’s why I’m really looking forward to working with children on an individual, or small group basis means really getting to know them and understand what helps them learn.

A couple of weeks ago I met one of my former pupils, a non attender at her previous school, with some of her friends. I told her I was leaving the classroom and she said how sad she was. It almost made me cry when she told her friends that I was the first teacher to listen to her and that made her want to come to school. I don’t take all the credit for that, it takes a village to raise a child, but it made me more convinced that tutoring is the way forward in my career. Being able to make a positive change in a child’s life is so important.