Melissa K

I am an accredited clinical research practitioner with experience teaching as part of my industrial year in a biochemistry degree. I have tutored over 25 students specialising in science and maths in the past 4 years across various platforms with students varying between year 7 to 13. I like to work in a way that the student progresses the most in each lesson, by creating a comfortable learning environment in a way that works best for each student, whether that be by going through everything with a fine tooth comb, going over work they have been given at school, doing exam practise or revising topics that they don't feel confident with. I do this by focusing on how they feel they best learn, visually or through discussion and I am willing to go extra lengths to make sure the students memorise, but also understand the content required, and not just retaining information for an exam, with the intention of later forgetting it. I believe I am a flexible tutor, and can adapt to the needs of every student. I believe that students should be given the opportunity to develop their passions, but also focus on the subjects they struggle with. By providing them with framework to make deeper connections between subjects and their passions, it makes the information they learn for their qualifications isn't just for the exams that they sit, but also to apply it later in life. I am fun and dedicated, and able to understand the problems in which students go through in the process of learning, and am able to help them with subjects that I believe I am strong enough at to improve their confidence with. I have also had tutoring experience for over 4 years, and have increased confidence in every student that I have tutored. Some of my students were only doing science because they had to for GCSE and have now decided to progress and do a level of these subjects.

I have been tutoring for four years, teaching physics in KS3 and GCSE, chemistry KS3-GCSE, and biology KS3 to A Level. I have also tutored extensively in maths from KS3-GCSE. In my placement year, I also taught all of these subjects to students both 1:1, but also full classes too, giving me lots of expertise and resources in tutoring your child. In this time, I have helped over 25 students individually improve whilst relating the topics to the world around them, and helping them understand beyond the syllabus to make required topics make sense but also relatable.

I like to structure my lessons in the way that the students best feel comfortable. I would start from the beginning of a topic and work through the content with them. Once a subject/chapter has been finished, we would do practise questions to ensure that they have understood the content before moving on. I would like to either sit down and discuss how they feel with the subject in the first lesson- whether by traffic lighting the content (highlighting in different colours the specification with what they feel comfortable with, need to learn and what to recap). This way I can identify where they feel they are least comfortable and slow down with those lesson in particular.

I have experience teaching Edexcel and AQA GCSE biology, chemistry, physics and combined science in addition to AQA A-Level biology and OCR Chemistry A Level. I have the ability and resources to also teach to other exam board specifications as required.

I have had students who were borderline passing come out of papers feeling extremely confident in their GCSEs, students who were told they couldn’t do a level subjects with their current grades excel to reach the requirements or above, and I have had students move up sets. To date, all my students have passed with either what they said they would be happy getting or above.