This week, I’ve been reminded that the work I do, and the effort my tutees put into their English work, really does make a difference.

On Thursday, a parent of one of my tutees (let’s call him M) sent me this email:

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This is a phenomenal achievement given that M was really struggling to pass English when he started working with me a few months ago. His confidence and enthusiasm for English was at an all time low because he felt he was in the wrong English set at school.

It’s easy when you’re in the midst of planning lessons, marking homework and doing admin, to lose sight of whether you’re actually impacting on the children you work with. You don’t have time to stand back and look at all you’ve achieved together. But this email prompted me to do just that.

One thing M struggled with was writing about the author’s choice of language in sufficient detail. He went round in circles in his writing, because he didn’t know the steps he needed to follow to think about language in more detail.

So, this is one of the things we addressed in our lessons. We started with an essay question and collected quotations. I then showed M some layers of analysis he needed to carry out.

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This was followed by lots of practice of identifying and annotating quotations on a range of texts

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And then more guided practice of putting these notes into a well structured response.

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Which then resulted in M writing a level 4 response in his Language Paper 2 mocks!

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His writing shows how he is now able to talk about the techniques the author is using, as well as link them to the effect that they have on the meaning of the text. In this piece of writing, he brilliantly zooms in on two words in one quotation, showing how they work together and squeezing as much out of them as he can.

It’s exactly what I’ve been encouraging him to do.

But to see him actually doing it, all by himself, is wonderful. Like magic, isn’t it?! 😉

If you’d like me to support your child in preparing for their GCSEs, I have a couple of spaces in my Boost your GCSE English skills groups (best for year 10s, at this point in the year) and I have opened two one-to-one slots up for year 11s in the evenings