Today I observed Sophie’s session with Annika for Year 10 Maths. During the session they were working on probability and how to navigate a wide variety of questions.
Sophie started by providing an enrichment question for Annika to challenge her and fully understand where her knowledge was at. From this, Sophie noticed that Annika could work on understanding harder worded questions involving Venn Diagrams, particularly those including more than two circles. While doing these questions, Sophie asked Annika to attempt the question on her own first without her guidance. This allowed the student to recognise her own level of knowledge which encouraged a boost in confidence. The student still asked questions which Sophie provided a very extensive answer to ensure the student fully understood what was being said.
The enrichment question also involved other topics such as simultaneous equations. This provided a perfect segway for Sophie to further strengthen her student’s knowledge on simultaneous equations which the student had somewhat forgotten how to do. Sophie then explained how to set up two equations and solve them simultaneously. She also provided an extra question for her to do to fully understand the topic and revise her student’s knowledge.
Once noticing some gaps in her knowledge, Sophie went back to the basics of probability to revise her student’s understanding. This made sure the student fully understood all aspects of probability before delving into harder exam style questions.
Throughout the session, Sophie was extremely encouraging and kept a very positive mindset which fostered an environment where the student felt extremely comfortable asking any questions. As a result, I noticed a deeper level of understanding was reached which I will definitely try to include in all of my sessions especially with students who may be a bit shy when it comes to asking questions.
Lily Powell
