I observed Sophia’s session with her Year 7 student. They were working on ratios and dividing certain quantities using a given ratio. Sophia started her student off with some introductory questions to build his confidence and consolidate the main theory and concepts behind this topic.
After ensuring the student understood this topic by talking through the concept with him, she moved on to helping him with some of his school homework questions that he had brought as well as supplementing this with some harder questions of her own. This was very helpful as Sophia’s adaptability to the student’s needs helped him feel he was on track with his work and that he also understood the concepts which was great to see. The way Sophia let the student read out the question and talk through his thinking process really helped to see if he understood the concept on his own. By allowing him to talk through his working out and making him feel comfortable to do so, her student also felt very comfortable to ask any questions throughout the working out process.
Sophia’s use of the whiteboard to break down ratios in a very clear way for her student helped to show the underlying theory behind ratios and how they are used in real life scenarios. By giving her student many ratio questions that were based on real life scenarios, her student understood how ratios are used in a realistic way, this not always being shown in the conventional practice questions in textbooks.
Whenever her student did not understand how to approach a question or was a bit unsure with his working out, Sophia made sure to give him the time to voice his ideas on how to approach the question. This helped Sophia identify what particular areas her student was unsure of and explain to him why some methods of working out would not work for different styles of questions. This then allowed her student to attempt the question again on his own and because of Sophia’s previous explanations, he was able to get these tricky questions correct.
Overall, the way Sophia ran her student’s session was great to see as it boosted the student’s confidence by encouraging him to engage in continual dialogue and brainstorming of the working out process. Great work Sophia and thank you for letting me observe!
Kristina McLean
