A bit of background
Hi everyone and welcome to Tutor Your Child.
My name is Julia and I have many years of experience teaching and providing consultancy for teachers as well as working within the youth work and after-school sector.
I live in the UK so I use British spelling.
I now work independently and have recently become available for online coaching sessions.
Outside of working I enjoy reading, socialising, and spending time with people. I would like to do more travelling – don’t we all.
Why this website?
I love spending time on the internet.
Spending time with people is one of my favourite things to do and that’s why coaching is such a great fit for me, but I also love the resources etc. that the internet gives us all.
I also like to share what I discover – and this website gives me the opportunity to do it with a much wider audience than my coaching clients.
I hope you enjoy it and find it useful.
Both teaching and learning should be enjoyable so have a great time – giving your children all the support they need – and have fun with it.
Superb Blogging Community
I would like to acknowledge the superb support and training I get from the WA blogging community. If you have a blog, or would like to have one, and would be interested in joining this community click here for further information. You can scroll down that page for further information. You can join for free, and never need to upgrade unless you want to. You don’t need a credit card to join – just an email address.
Keep in touch!
If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments area below.
All the best,
Julia
Founder of Tutor Your Child
There is so much useful information here. You have included lots of interesting, effective strategies & resources.
I feel that avid readers and listeners if story become avid story tellers. Lots of great examples will lead to children learning the art of creating stories without too much conscious effort.
Also oral story telling opportunities are a must. In schools children are often asked to write stories before they have completely mastered the art of handwriting, grammatical structure & spelling. While trying to get these technicalities right, they lose thread of their creative ideas or deliberately keep sentences short & simple. Freeing them from the constraints of writing frees their creative ideas, content and language choices!
If they can’t tell the story – they can’t write it. So now & again, let them tell create a story verbally & record it.
Also I love Julia Donaldson’s books as there are stories to be enjoyed on many levels from the very young upwards. The Gruffalo for instance is a very visual book – written in rhyme which little ones love. Lots of repetition that children love to join in with when getting a little older, to the subtleties of the clever little mouse for older children. Also her language choice is very rich and sentence structure quite complex yet easy to follow.
You are doing a great job Julia.
Thank you Mary.
That is a very generous and thoughtful response.
I absolutely agree with you about oral stories. And given the chance, even some very young children will tell the most amazing stories. Recording them for children is a great idea – whether that is an audio recording of the child, or an adult scribing for a child.
Thanks again!!
Hi Julia,
Excellent blogs! I’m sure that there will be many people who will find your suggestions and tips very useful indeed and many children who will benefit from them as a consequence.
As you know, I’m not commenting as a Mum of young children, just out of interest.
One thing that I find sad, is that those children who need tutoring the most, don’t always have parents who are interested in providing it. Some parents have no interest in education as such, as I’m sure you know. For such parents, your course is a really good idea, making it interesting and easy for parents to be able to help their child. If only it was possible to get all parents to give their children a helping hand with the three Rs when the child needs it.
The other thing, of course, is whether parents have the time and energy to do so, even if they do have the inclination! I would say most parents are working and the time they will have for tutoring will be limited. However, there will be many, many parents who will make the time and I’m sure your courses will be invaluable for them, especially those who cannot afford to pay for professional tutors. Bravo for your work in providing this opportunity for them.
All good wishes,
Maureen.
Thank you very much for your encouragement Maureen.
I also think some parents might want to help but think they haven’t got the skills to support their children, perhaps, partly because they hear jargon being used that they are not familiar with.
And yet spending time with your own children should be enjoyable for both parent and child and will pay off in many ways for both. 10 minutes of reading with children a day and chatting about the books just makes such a difference to progress in reading, but also helps you understand your child, find out what they think about different subjects, and conveys the message that you like them and want to spend time with them.
Thank you again for your kind comments.
Thank you Julia. Very interesting and helpful content. I will be sharing your site and using it in the future.
Hi Ngaire,
Thank you for your support! I really appreciate it!
Do let me know if there is anything in particular that you would like me to cover.
All the best!
Julia