I had the wonderful opportunity to observe Patricia’s Year 4 Maths session. They were working on times tables.
Patricia started the session off by getting the student to work through a set of times table worksheets. They started with some easier questions to build confidence, and Patricia was really supportive the whole way through. She asked questions like, “What patterns do you notice here?” and “Is there a quicker way to solve this?” It was great to see her not just focusing on answers but really helping the student think through the process.
When the student got stuck Patricia encouraged the student to try her hardest to solve it and if she still couldn’t she assisted her in solving the question. Instead of jumping in with the answer, she broke things down into smaller steps, like “What’s 4 times 5? How can we use that to figure out 6 times 5?” She also encouraged using strategies like counting in groups or visualising the numbers.
As the questions got harder, Patricia kept things interesting by adding a little competition. She timed how quickly the student could answer three questions in a row, and it really motivated them! Patricia also used a whiteboard to break down trickier problems, which helped the student see the steps more clearly.
Towards the end of the session, they tackled a few challenge problems together, and Patricia gave lots of positive reinforcement when the student solved them. By the end, the student was feeling much more confident and even managed to finish a section of the worksheet on their own.
Overall, Patricia did a great job keeping the session engaging, breaking down concepts, and building the student’s confidence. It was a really productive hour. Well done Patricia!
Eireyna Papinyan
