I observed Kaeley’s session, where she ensured her student was engaged throughout the session and was effective in balancing fun and learning. She used games such as uno to make the session fun while also turning this into teaching, explaining relationships between numbers and building on maths skills. When explaining difficult or confusing terms/ideas, she was calm and understanding with the student and tried different ways to explain to ensure that the student understood. She continually checked in with the student and answered any questions in depth to make sure her understanding was complete. It is clear that there is a good relationship between the student and tutor, allowing them to enjoy the session and engage in effective learning even when playing games.Kaeley used a whiteboard to help the student visualise how to convert different measurements and provided visuals to assist in her understanding of how the ideas work, which is very important to understand why something is happening.

Overall, this was a very effective and useful tutoring session that covered the ideas of measurement and basic mathematical concepts. The incorporation of games for students in a younger age group can be very effective in maintaining motivation and focus throughout the session and makes the dedicated learning time more productive. Using diagrams and drawings to visualise concepts allows the student to understand the difficult ideas in different ways that improves memory and concept retention.

Maddie Manins