Today I observed Kristina’s session with her Year 11 maths advanced student Katerina. They were focusing on the indices topic during the lesson. The session started of with them covering the key rules to know when working with indices before starting with questions. I like how Kristina ensured to check in with her student’s prior confidence with this topic to make her aware of what parts her student finds difficult and what to focus more strongly on during the lesson. Kristina started by doing the question on the board and asking her student what she thinks she should do next.
Completing the first few questions on the board together evidently helped Katerina with her confidence on some of the difficult questions!! She continued working through questions without needing Kristina’s help on the whiteboard and would ask questions to double check her work. Kristina continued to thoroughly explain the different methods to do certain questions and the certain mathematical conventions associated with this topic. I also liked how Kristina reminded her student about certain ways she should ensure to write answers especially in school exams. Kristina would also tell Katerina if she was close to the answer so Katerina could figure out her slight error herself instead of Kristina immediately pointing out the mistake, which is a much better learning experience!!
They continued with answering past HSC questions where Kristina gave her student further tips on how to answer the trickier questions.
It was great experience to observe this session and I think Kristina did very well!! Good job Kristina!!

Sophia McLean