I had the pleasure of observing Amelia’s session with Brian who’s a Year 7 English student.

In the session Amelia went through practice year 7 English comprehension papers with a year with Brian. Amelia would let Brian independently answer comprehension questions, letting him try to get his head around the question himself first and formulate an answer without her directly telling him. She was great at only prompting him and jumping in when he was really struggling with a comprehension question which was very effective in helping to build up Brian’s confidence in writing his own responses before asking for help.

I also noticed that Amelia had a colour coded highlighting system for Brian, where she instructed Brian to highlight important words in orange and highlight evidence in yellow that he could use to help him answer the comprehension questions later. Additionally, she helped Brian to understand when and where to include evidence in responses to comprehension questions when he was confused whether or not he needed to reference the passage.

Amelia would also give Brian plenty of time to read the text himself and to try understand it the best he could without her having to read it for him, which I though was great for helping him to practice under exam conditions.

Overall, Amelia was very attentive to Brian and great at only promoting him when needed in turn, developing Brian’s independence and confidence with his English comprehension skills when it comes to taking English tests.

Bianca Douroudis