This class is an initial assessment that allows me to assess where the student is at, and what the parents are looking for.  

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I will initially be tutoring up to USA / Australian Grade 8 or UK Year 9 level.  
This includes basic arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) as well as place value, fractions, decimals, percentages, ratio, averages, and finding perimeter, area and volume, and basic algebra.
I plan over the next few years to extend this to SATS / IGCSE level.


In preparation for an Initial Assessment, I recommend parents consider in advance the following questions:

- What is your goal in tutoring? Do you want them taught a full curriculum or supplement teaching in a conventional school?  Do you want your child to catch up with their class or do you want to extend your child's learning beyond what they are doing in class?  

- How long do you want tutoring for?  Do you want fill a temporary need, or do you want a long-term relationship?

- What is your your money / time priority? How long and how often do you want tutoring? Do you want to be actively involved in helping your child, but want some guidance in doing this?  Do you want the tutor to take full responsibility for ensuring your child does regular math learning?

IT IS EXPECTED THAT THE PARENT IS PRESENT DURING THIS ASSESSMENT.

I offer on-going tutoring at the following prices:

15 min for US$28 
25 min for US$44
55 min for US$88



MY EXPERIENCE AND TEACHING STYLE
I put myself through university tutoring Primary and Secondary level Mathematics.  I completed a Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education (Mathematics) and a Graduate Certificate in Mathematics in 2007.  I have taught Grade 6-12  Mathematics in Australia, the UK and New Zealand.  Being married to a Texan, I am also familiar with the USA system of Math subjects.  
I am currently a home school teacher to my own child, and hope to help your child on their educative journey too.

My main teaching experience was in a small Outback school with only 60 students across Grades 7-12.  I would teach all ability levels, and sometimes a few different courses, in the one class.  The NSW curriculum emphasised the ideal of differentiating teaching to the needs of each individual student, and I had the diversity of abilities and small class sizes to put this into practice.  I consider this ability to meet the individual needs of each student my greatest strength.

My math teaching qualification were an add-on to a PhD in Ancient Literature.  This brought to my teaching a knowledge of the place Mathematics has had in society for thousands of years.   It also equipped me with the skilled to critically read the latest trends and research in Mathematics Education.

I have class subscriptions to both IXL.com and eSingaporemath.com online mathematics platforms.  Students will have accounts with one or both of these according to age and ability.  These are valuable helps for helping students learn basic facts and skills in Mathematics.  

At the same time, I am fully aware that the latest technology is not a substitute for good teaching.  Despite all this technology, student levels of attainment in Maths have dropped in many countries in the last two decades. Research is showing the value of some of the older teaching methods.  Maths education, just like much of life, is about keeping a balance of things.  

My teaching philosophy and methods is a mixture of latest technology and research, and time-honoured teaching methods and skills. In reflection of this balance of the new and the proven, when teaching a complete maths course, I have the Cambridge Unuiversity Press textbooks and Teacher resources to teach the Cambridge Curriculum,  with the the end-goal of IGCSE Cambridge exams.

                                                            ****** MY TEACHING PHILOSOPHY  ********
A FOCUS ON APPLIED MATHS
There has been a move in education from "pure maths" to maths that develops critical thinking and discussion skills.  I think both of these are great things in their own right.   But at the end of the day, the question needs to be whether a student can use their maths skills in everyday life.  Can they apply their maths to work out how many animals their land can support, and how much hay will need to be stored for the winter?  Can they correctly calculate a drug dose, or work out the food required to feed 30 people on a budget of $200?  I focus on teaching applied maths.

CONCRETE, PICTORIAL, ABSTRACT APPROACH and LIFE-BASED MATHS
While I do not follow strictly Singapore Style teaching of Mathematics, I do frequently use the Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract (CPA) Approach in my teaching.  I consider a set of Base Ten Blocks and Fractions Bars a valuable resource for every Elementary / Primary aged child. 

It is vital for younger students to apply their maths in a real-life context to gain an understanding of the concepts of place value, times tables ,and when to use the for basic operations.
I know this will never happen, but if society was serious about improving maths scores, then they should ban the bank card and make everyone use cash again for everyday shopping.  So much number sense (especially place value) has been lost because many students have no experience of shopping with or counting real money.


ROTE LEARNING AND MEMORISATION
I don't consider either of these a dirty word.  There are basic facts and skills that every student needs to be fluent in, and practice makes perfect.  It is important that children have the background skill required to take the next step in Maths learning.  At the same time, it is also important that students who do know these skills do not continue with meaningless practice.  Rote learning and memorisation needs to be tailored to each child.

EXPLICIT TEACHING
I focus on explicit teacher-led learning.  I then gradually release the student to be able to apply what I teach to a variety of situations.
I think exploratory learning can be a great teaching tool that I sometimes use, but not in every lesson. There is no way that students are going to develop for themselves all the maths concepts that it has taken thousands of years for the best minds in society to create.    A lot of lesson time can be lost as students develop maths concepts for themselves, and in reality what often happens is that the same few bright bunnies in the class work out how/why maths concept works and explicitly teach the other children.  I would rather spend the lesson time explicitly teaching a math skill, and then model for students how it can be used in real life. 

CALCULATORS
I don't ban calculators in the Elementary / Primary School years.  Both my personal experience and research supports their use as beneficial.  Once students start High School, they are told to use their calculator for everything and given a detention if they don't bring it to every maths lesson.  Many school-leaving exams are dropping a non-calculator section. (E.g. the latest USA SATS exam).   In real life almost every adult carries with them a calculator app on their phone.

The argument against their use in the primary school years is that children will not develop problem-solving skills if they "lazily" use a calculator.  I have found the opposite.  In every level of age and ability, I have found that students often know how to solve the problem but get the wrong answer due to incorrect arithmetic.  Questions are also often "dumbed down" to the level that a child can easily do the arithmetic without a calculator, and it does not easily translate into real life problems. 
Furthermore, people didn't really do maths with just pen and paper in the good old days. Calculation aids are nothing new.  Clay tablets with Calculation aids for Trigonometry date back to 2500BCE, and calculation tables, abacus and slide rules have been used for centuries until calculators appeared.  

I am not saying that students should not be taught how to do basic arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) with pen and paper.  It helps teach number sense and prepares students for manipulating numbers in a formula.  When another topic like Area or Percentages is being taught, however, the amount of practice questions a student does can be much reduced if they have to do the arithmetic calculations by hand.  It is also very demoralising for students to constantly get the wrong answer due to faulty arithmetic, when they actually know the process.  

MENTAL MATHS AND THE OLD ALGORITHMS
I teach some genuine mental maths, that can be done without pencil and paper.  (E.g. "What is 153 + 20?") but I don't focus on continually using "mental maths" that takes five lines of written explanation. I definitely will not be teaching three different "mental" methods to answer every problem. If I am going to make a student do arithmetic without a calculator, then I see no problem with the old algorithms to teach this.   They remain effective even when larger numbers or decimals are involved. 

SHOW WORKING
I consider it important to teach students to show correct working from an early stage.  I come from the British tradition of maths testing where exams are not simply multiple choice. Most questions require an extended written answer, and each step of the working is marked as well as the final answer.    Learning how to show clear working prepares students for Advanced Algebra and Calculus and also for maths in real life.

EVERY CHILD SHOULD PROGRESS AT THEIR OWN LEVEL AND ALSO BE GIVEN THE MEANS TO ACCELERATE
I believe that every child should do maths at a level that is both achievable and challenging.  In other words, I believe it important to stream students into higher and lower ability levels. But more importantly, I also believe that lower-performing student should have the pathway open to accelerate to higher ability groups.  Poor teaching at Primary/Elementary level, disruptive life events, and delayed development of abstract thinking skills are some reason why students may show a delayed ability in maths.  For this reason I focus on 1:1 Tutoring rather than locking them into a standard class pace.