Stephan

I am a third-year BSc Mathematics with Finance student at the University of Exeter. I am an enthusiastic, engaging person interested and enjoy helping and teaching people. From understanding people and the frustration of not comprehending subjects, especially maths, my passion in maths and teaching allow me to have a successful approach in explaining concepts in a way that I wish I was taught at school.

From constantly having high grades throughout school for maths, I furthered my passion for the subject through always explaining and teaching to fellow students, friends and siblings. From hearing positive results from my interactions, my passion grew for teaching, seeing people finally understanding something they could not before was always very satisfying. Throughout my A-Levels I enrolled on being a volunteer as a maths teacher assistant, finding the experience very helpful in understanding the various ways to teach different students with different abilities.

In my further education doing a maths degree, I wish to hone my capabilities in teaching with online tutoring and head towards a teaching career after my graduation.

Tutoring Experience

Volunteer Maths Teacher Assistant at Cox Green School: 2019 - 2020

I assisted various year's maths classes ranging from year 7-11, helping different students with their work, marking and returning feedback to students. Eventually teaching some classes myself alongside with their teacher.

Tutoring Approach

My approach stems from positive experiences with my teachers throughout school and university, and involves first presenting some starter questions for the students. Once having finished the starter, as a class, we go through the questions making sure students understand the methods of the calculations. This is similar to a warm up to get the students in the ready mindset to start the actual class.
Having a prepared topic, I start to go through example questions from a textbook, showing and explaining the method of the calculations. I do this neatly and go through every step showing how to correctly write out the method to not miss any steps. Whilst implementing ways of understanding how to tackle the questions, i.e. Always draw out the question (in the right context); never skip any steps; if unsure, remember the starters and do what you can.
After two example questions, depending on the topic and the understanding of the students, I give them a time limit to do some follow up questions themselves. Assisting where needed while grasping what is not being understood. At the end of the time limit, we go through the questions with the students asking in between for students' inputs for what the next steps are and overall answers; ensuring that they can do the question with me to build confidence, whilst proactively learning.
Finishing the lesson with handing out homework questions picked out from the textbook to further their understanding of the topic.