“Education, education, education.” -stated by Tony Blair
He’s right, that education is the key to success, social mobility, and better opportunities in life. Surely it depends on the kind of education that you receive? Here’s why you should choose Ipswich Tuition Centre.
Here at Ipswich Tuition Centre, we guarantee achievement and happiness. Whatever skills and knowledge that our students have when they arrive, we ensure that they leave with a greater knowledge and greater ability to tackle exam questions in English, mathematics and science from Primary School right up to A Level.
Our students enjoy their learning because they have the opportunity to use computer programs to improve their skills as well as the more traditional approaches to subjects such as reading, writing, calculations and the scientific method.
Here are some recent student recommendations:
“We’re so pleased with his English mock. Thank you ever so much for all your support!”
“She always looks forward to her English lessons at the centre.”
Students who are supported and encouraged by family members always do better! As English is central to all subjects, having the ability to interpret and understand questions is key. You can read questions with your child and decide what they mean!
Try the following example:
‘How does Shakespeare portray the character of Romeo or Macbeth?’ (Decide on the meaning of ‘portray’ and make a list of what each character says and does plus what others say about him as well as how he behaves.)
Feeling baffled or inquisitive? Ask an English tutor at Ipswich Tuition Centre for the answer sheet.
You might be surprised to hear how much our customers enjoy reading a novel or a play with their children. One parent said “The Sign of Four was so exciting that it inspired me to read more books. My son enjoyed discussing the plot and characters. We even learnt quotations together!”
Extended writing is important if you want to get a high grade in English. Have a look on the internet, or at printed articles on topics such as social media, the value of homework and the environment. See if they can spot AFOREST techniques (see explanation below ?).
Looking at the opening of novels. Can you write a brilliant first sentence? Here’s a link to some opening lines of novels.
Reading together is a great idea. Find a short story or novel of a genre that your student likes. Crime, mystery and science fiction stories are always popular. Why not ask our English tutors for a reading list? Contact us here.
Looking for more tips or advice? Help them to memorise and use language techniques such as similes, metaphors and personification. Students love to make up their own examples and are surprised when they find out that ‘hyperbole’ is not a bowling risk!
Contact Ipswich Tuition Centre before the summer and we can give you lots of helpful English activities to improve their English Language and English Literature during the holidays! Still stuck for ideas? Have a look at www.sparknotes.com or www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize
AFOREST techniques (Contact Ipswich Tuition Centre if you’re not sure about any of them):
Photo by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS: https://www.pexels.com/photo/123-let-s-go-imaginary-text-704767/
Do you want to improve your communication skills? If so, it’s easy if you follow a few simple techniques! Firstly, in every subject you should read the questions carefully so that you answer the question correctly.
Now let’s talk more about reading: Reading is always good and you can improve your communication skills even if you only read notices, magazines, blogs and any articles on the internet. Obviously, you can also improve your imagination and be more creative if you read novels, short stories, plays or poems.
Talking is key to your success. Have you noticed how some people use longer words? Examiners love these if they make sense in your sentence. They think you’re scintillating! Why not think of a topic and practice talking to your friends and family for one minute about it. It could be your version of ‘Just a Minute’!
Writing can be fun! Try writing a brilliant opening sentence to a story with any title such as ‘Fear’, ‘Joy’ or ‘The Day My Life Changed’. Hook your reader with a gripping opening such as ‘The blood poured endlessly from her head‘ or ‘She lay prostrate on the uliginous ground‘. It’s a great opportunity to use some sophisticated vocabulary.
All of the above and much more is taught at Ipswich Tuition Centre. Communication is the key to life, so why not try exploring it at Ipswich Tuition Centre? “If you just communicate, you can get by, but if you communicate skilfully, you can work miracles.” (Jim Rohn)
Read more about English at Ipswich Tuition Centre here
What are your happy memories about school? Perhaps most of all you remember trips out of school, or getting your hands dirty in a laboratory or technology room, or being read a beautiful story, or playing with friends during break-time. It seems that most of our stand-out memories are not inside a classroom.
What about your negative memories of school? Do you remember bullying, exams, being told off, not being able to sit still, horribly long periods listening to a boring teacher?
A week on from Mental Health Awareness Week I thought I’d consider some alternative approaches to education to see if they can better support children who don’t enjoy school.
Home-schooling is often starts as a counter-point to trouble in school such as bullying, stress and anxiety or poor provision for special educational needs. If your child does not respond well to a classroom of 30, then home-schooling can offer much better adult-to-child ratios and emotional support. Children can still get a sense of community and peer interaction from home school cooperatives and sports, and they can still be entered for GCSEs.
Bring your warm and waterproof clothing because you’re often outside in a forest school. Predominantly aimed at primary school children, forest schools use a lot of child led activities so that children value each other as team-mates and friends. It also uses physical, risky activities using knives, fire and tree climbing (including den building and rope swings) that develop a child’s sense of self awareness.
There are many private alternatives to main-stream school, including Montessori schools, and schools which both embrace and shun technology.
In conclusion, good education system empowers students as self-learners who are happy and well-balanced emotionally. Our mainstream school system finds it increasingly difficult to accommodate students on the fringes and with complex needs. The Wildlife Trust advocates an hour a day outdoors to help facilitate well rounded student-learners.
At Ipswich Tuition Centre we give students space to express themselves emotionally, supporting them to be well-balanced. We also tailor our approach to each individual student, encouraging them to learn in a way that suits them and to enjoy what they do.
Do you want to remember as much information as possible? Do you want to be ready for all your exams?
If yes, then you need healthy revision techniques, and a healthy lifestyle. Staying happy and healthy during your exam period helps students to retain more information and for better problem solving in your exams. Read on to find out how to do it!
Set up a revision timetable so that you have a plan for the day ahead. Use a calendar, wall-chart or diary so that you know what you are doing each day, and to be sure of revising for each topic equally.
Block your time into hours, then work for 45mins with a 15min break. Avoid screens during your break time, or at least avoid social media with an endless scroll such as Facebook and Instagram. Keep your break time relaxed; go to see your pets, take a walk around the garden or make a cup of tea.
But beware of caffeine! Caffeine can affect your sleep patterns, and will give you a short energy boost instead of a long one.
Exams are a marathon not a sprint. Be happy and energetic throughout your exams and finish with a smile. Be sure to keep up your hobbies and to see your friends throughout your revision.
Write your worries down; get them out of your system. Designate 15mins every day to writing down your hopes and fears, and then you won’t need to dwell on them at all for the rest of the day.
Stay relaxed, it is common to feel a lot of guilt during revision, but a relaxed state of mind will retain more information than a stressed one.
Look at past exam papers, then attempt questions and mark them yourself. You can find all the past maths papers on the Maths Made Easy website: https://mathsmadeeasy.co.uk/all-past-papers/
“In between Christchurch Park and the Regent Theatre”
Like most of the directions that we give each other, the instructions above depend on local knowledge to create a shared point of reference. This can be difficult when directing somebody that you’ve never met, and additionally can sometimes not be understood by a computer or non-native English speaker.
Happily however, we can now direct customers to Ipswich Tuition Centre using What3Words ///fact.boat.rocks
What3Words is a British start-up founded 9 years ago by a developer in rural Hertfordshire who couldn’t be found by delivery drivers. Coordinates using latitude and longitude are incredibly accurate, but they require 16 digits and have never been widely adopted by the public or business community. Instead w3w inventor Chris Sheldrick uses three words that divide the world into 3m x 3m squares so that the postman can find your front door.
The Mathematics
As ever at Ipswich Tuition Centre we are very interested in the mathematics of a resource. The total surface area of the earth is 510 million square kilometres (or 1,969,000 square miles). If the earth was a perfect sphere you could calculate this using one of our GCSE formulae 4/3 x pi x radius squared. However did you know that the earth is actually a flattened sphere? Read more here.
There are 40000 words in the English language, and when we use combinations of three words we have 64 trillion possible combinations (40000 x 40000 x 40000). Ideally you need 57 trillion combinations to cover an area of 510 million square kilometres in squares of 3m x 3m (or 10feet x 10feet).
Go ahead and try it; the What3Words app is free to download and use, or you can visit the What3Words website. Find Ipswich Tuition Centre at ///fact.boat.rocks or you can find a number of London’s key attractions here.
Dyscalculia (rhymes with Julia) is a term for people that really struggle with mathematics.
Adults with dyscalculia struggle to tell the time, but also to read train timetables, their bank balance or even their car speedometer. This can be really stressful. Small things that many of us take for granted can cause problems, such judging what time to leave the house before an appointment.
Children with dyscalculia may have difficulties counting backwards, or struggle to use left or right. They can be overly reliant on counting in ones and can be very slow when attempting maths problems. People with dyscalculia often forget maths procedures and formulas very quickly, so they need support to remember them long term (e.g. during end of year exams). These difficulties often lead (very reasonably) to children and adults avoiding maths tasks for fear of getting it wrong.
People with dyscalculia have a problems with mathematics that are not related to their education or upbringing. Dyscalculia is a learning difficulty similar to dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD/ADD, and persons can often have more than one of these conditions. It is often characterised by a person being well below the mathematical ability expected for their age group.
All of our brains are different, and with this neurodiversity we see that some people are very able in one area but less so in another. For example a learning difficulty like dyscalculia can mean that a person with a PHD in literature cannot score higher than a F in GCSE mathematics.
One of the higher estimates that I’ve read is that 5-7% of our population have dyscalculia, that’s up to 4 million people in the UK. Because of this I question the logic of expecting everybody to pass mathematics GCSE; it is often a requirement when applying for a new job.
As a maths tutor I hope to do more to support my students, many of whom have undiagnosed dyscalculia. I can use more multisensory tools to give a hands-on approach to teaching. Using pictures to represent numbers can very useful, so parents at home can play games with dice and dominoes to support students.
We all have difficulties in some areas, but from working alongside children with learning difficulties such as dyscalculia and dyslexia, teachers have learnt that repetitive learning can really help. Sometimes called ‘over-learning’ at Ipswich Tuition Centre we repeat key ideas week after week to help students with learning difficulties.
A snowflake has many many tiny branches, making it one of the smallest fractals in nature. It is made of ice growing in lots of tiny repeating branches.
Fractals are fascinating shapes that move in patterns that repeat as they get smaller and smaller. But whilst every snowflake has lots of repeating patterns, no two snowflakes are completely alike.
Fun Fact! Snowflakes are formed in the clouds as water vapour freezes into ice particles. By definition snowflakes are therefore sleet, not frozen raindrops.
There are 35 different types of snowflake, but the variation in the temperature and dampness of the cloud means that snowflakes form unique fractal patterns; so no two are ever alike.
Snowflakes formed in very cold temperatures tend to be very simple, and those formed close to 0 degrees celsius are much more complicated.
Fun Fact! The largest snowflake ever recorded was 40cm wide and 20cm thick!
Did you know that every snowflake is a hexagon? Every snowflake has six-fold symmetry, and it’s fun to make your own by folding square paper into six.
Many facts for this article were taken from the #factsite: https://www.thefactsite.com/facts-about-snowflakes/
One of the resources that we use most at Ipswich Tuition Centre is the Nessy Learning Program. I’ve asked Jane Rowe- our English specialist for younger learners- to provide a quick overview of the software:
Nessy Learning Program is both auditory and visual because it’s important that children learn to spell words whilst hearing them at the same time. Students learn rules of how to spell certain sounds, and are then monitored to see how well they can use the rules to spell key words. We use headphones so that students can concentrate and hear sounds clearly.
Nessy Learning Program is ‘dyslexic friendly’, meaning that it was designed for dyslexic learner non-dyslexic students alike.
It’s a fun way of learning spelling- or more specifically learning the way that words are structured- and our students enjoy the activities more than almost all others at Ipswich Tuition Centre.
We use Nessy Learning Program to track students progress by reviewing their scores from computer activities and by marking the corresponding worksheets. Students and teachers find it easy to see the progress being made, which gives students a real sense of achievement and promotes independence.
Students are empowered to take control of their own learning at Ipswich Tuition Centre, thanks for reading about one of our key resources!
? How many roses are cut for Valentine’s Day every year? ?
? How many love letters can you write with a single ballpoint pen? ?
❤️ How many times will your heart beat before you fall in love? ❤️
Fermi problems, named after physicist Enrico Fermi, require students to make quick mathematical estimates to solve a problem. The problems are not about finding an exact answer- most Fermi problems will never have an exact answer- but about justifying the assumptions that you have made. Then- if thought through- two different students should get an answer within the same order of magnitude.
Try them at home with your family! I’ve written a few Fermi Problems above that you could use today (Valentine’s Day), but you could think of your own or search for a few good ones on the internet.
Try this video as an introduction to estimating solutions to Fermi Problems:
Due to high demand we are currently closed to all new GCSE students. Thank you for considering Ipswich Tuition Centre, we expect to have capacity again in May 2024.
