We’ve all been there – textbooks open, highlighters everywhere, and that sinking feeling that maybe you should have started studying a little earlier. Every year, I see my HSC students make the same mistake – leaving things to the last minute and relying on an intense cramming session the night before an exam. It’s understandable. There’s always so much to do, and it’s easy to feel like you have more time than you actually do. But the reality is, cramming doesn’t work. It creates stress, messes with sleep, and usually leads to forgetting half of what was studied. The students who perform the best aren’t necessarily the ones who study more – they’re the ones who study smarter.

I always encourage my students to start small and start early. You don’t need to spend hours every day drowning in textbooks. Even just 30-45 minutes of solid, focused study can make a huge difference if you do it consistently. Instead of just re-reading notes or highlighting, I push them to actively engage with the content – cover their notes, test themselves, and explain concepts in their own words. The ones who do this properly start noticing a shift; things start to stick, and they gain confidence in their knowledge.

A common struggle is planning. Many students say they’ll study “sometime today” but never actually get around to it. I get them to schedule it like an appointment – “From 4-5 PM, I’ll do past papers for English.” It removes the guesswork and helps them stay accountable. Speaking of past papers, they’re one of the best tools out there. I see a huge difference between students who regularly do timed practice questions and those who don’t. Not only do they get used to the structure of the exam, but they also become more confident in applying their knowledge under pressure.

The other big factor is sleep. I can always tell when a student has pulled an all-nighter before a lesson – they’re exhausted, foggy, and struggling to retain anything. I remind them that sleep is study. It’s when the brain consolidates information, and sacrificing it for extra revision often does more harm than good. The same goes for breaks – overloading the brain isn’t productive.

At the end of the day, my students who trust the process and pace themselves always perform better than those who rely on a last-minute cram session. It’s not about studying harder; it’s about studying smarter.

Carmen Yuen

Today I also observed Allegra tutoring a Year 11 student English. She didn’t just focus on getting the student to write better—she helped them think better, guiding them through essay structures, short-answer comprehension, and the key skills needed to expand on their ideas and find relevant quotes/evidence.

One of the standout moments was how she broke down essay writing into clear, manageable steps. Instead of overwhelming the student with abstract advice like “make your argument stronger,” she walked them through how to structure their thesis, build analytical paragraphs, and use evidence effectively. She encouraged them to start with a clear topic sentence, integrate relevant quotes, and explain how language techniques reinforced meaning. By the end of the session, the student was contributing with confidence and providing specific analysis.

Allegra also worked on short-answer comprehension, an area where many students struggle. Rather than rushing through the questions, she encouraged a step-by-step approach: read the question carefully, identify keywords, and link responses directly to the text. When the student hesitated on a difficult questions, she didn’t just give them the answer. Instead, she asked guiding questions, helping them develop their own response. It was clear that she wasn’t just teaching content—she was teaching the student how to think critically and approach any different questions methodically.

What stood out most was the shift in the student’s attitude. At the start, they were unsure, second-guessing their answers. By the end, they were answering with greater certainty, structuring their responses more clearly, and even reflecting on how to improve. Allegra’s approach showed that good tutoring isn’t just about content—it’s about giving students the strategies and confidence to tackle challenges independently.

Shyla Gloster

In the world of tutoring, the relationship between a tutor and a student plays a crucial role in fostering academic success. While knowledge and teaching strategies are essential, it is the connection built between tutor and student that often has the greatest impact on a student’s progress. Strong tutor-student relationships create an environment where trust, respect, and motivation flourish, ultimately improving the student’s confidence and learning outcomes.

One of the key benefits of a positive relationship is that it allows students to feel comfortable asking questions, expressing confusion, and admitting when they don’t understand something. When students feel safe in their learning environment, they are more likely to engage fully and take risks in their learning. This openness also allows tutors to identify areas where students are struggling and tailor their lessons to meet individual needs.

A strong relationship also fosters motivation. When students feel supported and understood, they are more likely to stay committed to their studies, even when the material becomes challenging. Tutors who take the time to understand their student’s interests, learning style, and personal challenges can better motivate them by incorporating relevant examples or adjusting lesson pace and content to keep the student engaged.

Furthermore, positive relationships build student confidence. When tutors consistently praise effort and progress, rather than just focusing on grades or outcomes, students begin to believe in their own abilities. This shift in mindset can be incredibly powerful, as it encourages students to take ownership of their learning and persevere through difficulties.

In tutoring, building a strong relationship is not just about helping students with their homework, it’s about creating an environment where students feel respected, valued, and empowered. By investing in these relationships, tutors can support students in their academic journey, helping them achieve not only academic success but also personal growth and confidence.

Demetria Koutavas

Tutoring is often seen as a way to improve academic performance, but its impact goes far beyond better grades. One of the most valuable outcomes of tutoring is the confidence it builds in students—sometimes more important than just teaching the subject itself.

Confidence is the foundation for learning. A student who believes in their ability to succeed is far more likely to engage with their studies, take risks, and persevere through challenges. I’ve noticed this firsthand in my tutoring experiences. At the start, some students hesitate to answer questions, afraid of getting them wrong. Over time, as they receive encouragement, tailored explanations, and a safe space to make mistakes, they begin to take ownership of their learning.

One memorable example was a student struggling with English essay writing. Initially, they were reluctant to share ideas, convinced they “weren’t good at writing.” Rather than just drilling them on structure and techniques, I focused on building their confidence—praising insightful thoughts, breaking tasks into manageable steps, and showing them that their ideas had value. A few weeks later, they started speaking up more, tackling essays with less hesitation. Seeing them go from avoiding writing to taking pride in their work was a reminder that confidence can be the key to unlocking potential.

While academic success is important, tutoring should also empower students to believe in themselves. When a student gains confidence, their growth extends beyond the classroom—they develop resilience, independence, and a mindset that will serve them in all areas of life. That’s why tutoring isn’t just about schoolwork; it’s about fostering self-belief that lasts far beyond the final exam.

Shyla Gloster

Today I’ve learned some valuable things that I will integrate into my tutoring from now on. The main take away for me was a strategy of suggesting alternate ways to look at something such as a graph, like asking what it would be like if the gradient of a line was negative. This ensures they fully understand the maths. Another strategy includes asking the student questions about steps towards the answer is a way to make them think about it. Asking “right?” at the end makes them confirm the approach, making the process more memorable via confirmation. Trying to be specific about what the student struggles with is also important in order to identify a topics to target and how to reassure them that they can progress forward. Although they’re available, I don’t often use whiteboards, but reflecting on how it’s clearly helpful, I shall be using them more often. Whiteboards help students visualise the maths problem and thus enables them to make connections faster. They’re also great for flexibility because mistakes can be erased and fixed easily, without the discouragement of crossing something out. Checking in with them about understanding helps the tutor know what their student understands. Another tutoring strategy that stuck out to me, was showing students alternate ways to write out an expression in maths, which can help them see different ways of solving the problem, or make it easier for them by phrasing the question in a way that makes sense for them. Something that I think is applicable across primary and high school, is the outlining of what form the answer needs to be in. For example, if it’s a multiple choice question, and the answer needs to be negative, then it can’t be a positive option. This process of elimination increases answering speed and teaches students what they need to look for in a question.

Leela Money

Today I had the pleasure of observing Demi with her Year 7 Maths student Aleks in which they worked on reinforcing key mathematical concepts, while addressing gaps in his Year 6 knowledge. The lesson focused on worded problems, converting mixed fractions to improper fractions, adjacent angles, NAPLAN overview and the angles of triangles. Demi employed a range of strategies to engage Aleks and enhance his understanding, using both digital and physical resources to create an interactive and dynamic learning environment.

To introduce the topic of fractions, Demi broke the process down into clear, manageable steps, ensuring Aleks grasped each stage before moving on. She used her laptop to display visual representations, helping to bridge the conceptual gap between mixed and improper fractions. To solidify understanding, she encouraged Aleks to explain his reasoning aloud, reinforcing the “learning by teaching” method.

A particularly effective aspect of her lesson was the use of the whiteboard as a collaborative tool. Rather than simply explaining concepts, Demi actively involved Aleks by having both of them stand up and solve problems together. This hands-on approach made the learning process feel more engaging and participatory rather than passive. She modelled problem-solving strategies first, then encouraged Aleks to replicate and adapt them, fostering his confidence and independence in tackling complex questions.

When exploring adjacent angles and triangle properties, Demi integrated questioning techniques that prompted deeper thinking. Instead of providing immediate answers, she guided Aleks through the reasoning process, helping him connect prior knowledge with new concepts. Her patient and supportive demeanour ensured that mistakes were viewed as learning opportunities rather than setbacks.

Overall, Demi’s lesson was a strong example of interactive and student centered teaching. Her ability to seamlessly blend direct instruction with inquiry-based learning techniques created a supportive and stimulating environment, ensuring Aleks remained engaged and actively involved in his own learning process.

Briana Vaz

Hey everyone! Today, I had the opportunity to observe Kassandra tutor her Year 10 maths student. Throughout the session, her use of visual diagrams on the whiteboard and written working out assisted her student in understanding complex mathematical concepts, including trigonometry and algebra. There was a big focus on angles of elevation and depression, as well as bearings, with the goal of her student being able to independently draw out worded questions. Kassandra provided her student with helpful revision worksheets and practice questions from multiple textbooks, which enabled her student to answer a wide range of different-styled questions.

After some revision, Kassandra asked her student to specify which other areas she had confusion with, thus allowing her to gather the relevant resources and work through sample questions collaboratively. Her clear voice when explaining important working out supported her student towards better understanding. Here, I also learnt the importance of displaying working out in different coloured markers for enhanced student comprehension.

As a result, her student was able to maintain her focus throughout the session. I saw this as a positive sign of engagement and an eagerness to learn (e.g. how to complete difficult questions), which was established through Kassandra’s encouraging tone and comfortable nature. Something that I loved about her teaching approach was that she provided her student enough time to work through the questions, rather than simply giving the answer. Kassandra also knew when to provide assistance to her student, obviously when required. By adopting these practices, as tutors, we are allowing our students to make mistakes along the way — which in unpopular opinion, is actually good — emphasising a need for constant learning and development. That’s what we are here for… to support our students in improving their understanding and addressing their individual needs, through the use of tailored resources.

Kaelyn Tan

One of the most rewarding parts of tutoring primary school students is helping them learn how to structure their thoughts in writing. Writing isn’t just about putting words on a page — it’s about organising ideas in a way that makes sense and, for young learners, this doesn’t always come naturally.

The challenge starts with how kids see writing. Many think of it as just filling up space or lines on a page of homework, without much thought about how sentences connect, how one idea should lead to another, or how it would feel like to be the reader digesting all this information. They might first write that the main character is a little girl with brown hair and blue eyes, then jump straight to a dragon that, inexplicably, she has been tasked with fighting. So sometimes the first step to writing logically is to teach them to think logically.

One of my favourite ways of achieving this is a visual aid. When students struggle with storytelling, laying out a simple outline of beginning, middle, and end, with setting and character running underneath the entire time, often leads to that “click” moment.
Beyond structure, it’s also crucial important to build confidence in young writers, since so many students hesitate to write because they’re just afraid of making mistakes, of seeming dumb, and of not living up to expectations. They worry about spelling, grammar, or whether their ideas are “good enough” or “smart enough”. But content always matters more than perfection, particularly in the beginning, like how a page of unstructured, misspelled writing is still always better than an empty page.
Exposure, patience, and practice come next (along with hopefully a lot of reading!). Younger students typically need a lot of time to absorb the fundamental concepts of articulation. Repetition isn’t a setback or a road bump, it’s pretty much the entire learning process, with the same lesson or technique often requiring multiple methods of teaching and examples before it really sticks. This means that we should always approach writing with a mindset geared towards each student’s individual pace, and remember to be appreciative of the small wins, like when a student remembers to use paragraphs for the first time.

Ultimately, writing isn’t just an academic skill relegated to a homework book — it’s a way of thinking and making sense of the world which can help students of all ages to find their voice.

Mica Krzyzanowski

For many students, math itself isn’t daunting—it’s the words. Word problems add an extra layer of complexity, requiring students to translate language into equations before they even start solving. This can be frustrating, especially for students who are confident in their calculations but struggle to understand what the question is asking in the first place.

So, what makes word problems tricky?

1. Too Much Information at Once.
Unlike straightforward equations, word problems present information in a non-linear way, which can be overwhelming.

2. Ambiguous wording.
Some students trip up on the phrasing of the problem rather than the math itself.

3. Lack of a Strategy
Many students dive straight into calculations without taking the time to analyse what’s being asked.

How can we get better at word problems, then? To put it simply, working out!

1.Breaking it down step by step: Pause before jumping to your calculator. Read the question, and then try and reword it so it makes sense to your brain. Everyone’s approach will be different!

2. Look out for specific language: ‘total’ means addition, ‘difference’ means subtraction. Being able to recognise this immediately will help you being to scaffold the equation!

3. Draw a diagram! It goes without saying that if you’re doing a real-world trig question, drawing a diagram makes your life INFINTELY easier!!!

4. Finally, practise! We only get better through time and hard work.

Sophie McGrath

I had the opportunity to observe Thomas and his Year 9 Maths student who were working on simple interest. Throughout the session there were a range of things he implemented contributed to the session running effectively.

Firstly, his incorporation of visuals and constant feedback. This allowed for the student to improve his understanding of the content while also making complex problems seem less intimidating. This was very visibly effective, creating a comfortable atmosphere and making the student feel more relaxed and at ease.

Additionally, his tone of voice and disciplinary character. Despite being consistently calm and friendly, Thomas remained strict in expressing his goals for the student during the session. By providing explicit instructions for his student he allowed for the most coherent and successful completion of content. This was a critical element that contributed to the productive nature of the session.

Finally, his communication and patience were something unique that elevated the quality of this session. Irrespective of the whether his student may have made mistakes, Thomas continued to be reassuring and supportive. This ensured that he remained motivated and constant in his efforts throughout the entirety of the session.

Katerina Vrahnos