I had the opportunity to observe Jordan’s tutoring session with his Year 12 English Advanced student today! It was great to see how comfortable the student was with asking him questions and when she didn’t understand, she would make sure there was extra clarification by asking him more questions so that she fully understood the concepts they were working through. The first thing they went through was how to find themes in texts, as the student said her teacher hadn’t really provided them with enough knowledge on how to do this. Jordan was great at properly explaining how to find themes by going through the characters and events of the texts in depth and then considering what the author’s purpose was for their text. He also explained that it’s important to understand the themes of a text as it can give greater depth to an essay, rather than just writing about surface level ideas which are more common. He then spent majority of the session discussing Module C: The Craft of Writing, as the student was quite nervous for her upcoming assessment. Particularly, they focused on how to write reflections for one’s own piece and also other prescribed texts, as the student hadn’t learnt how to do this until now. Jordan did a great job at summarising reflection structure in the most understandable way, and showed the student his own reflection as a reference so that she could see exactly how to write one, rather than just assuming she knew what he was talking about. It was great that he also explained the importance of analysing the techniques from prescribed texts, rather than simply just one’s own work, as this is a major part of reflections which I’ve found students often struggle with. Overall a great session to observe!

Daisy Brenac