Clara James Tutoring
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The 5-minute-challenge snakes & ladders game
We laughed and laughed some more as our brains started to break under the pressure.
This past week or two I’ve pretty much said goodbye to most of the GCSE students I’ve been working with. I was thinking about it the other day as I left a lad’s home for the last time.
Some of the kids we work with we get to know over a period of several years, I’ve known families through marriages, divorces, births, and sadly one girl I worked with lost her mum during the time that I worked with her.
Although you’re not tutoring them anymore, it’s strange you never forget those you’ve worked with.
One of the first lads I ever worked with, our goal was to extend his vocabulary. Yesterday, I was playing the 5-minute-snakes-and-ladders game with someone, which is basically a mash up of the 5-minute challenge and snakes and ladders.
In the 5-minute challenge you have a list of 12 categories, and 5 minutes to try and think of 3 words that fit for each category: with adjectives starting with C, countries starting with C, 3 farm animals, etc.
In the snakes and ladders version instead of having 5-minutes we just had the categories written on the squares of the board, each time you land on a square you need to think of 3 words in the same way, but you’re not against the clock.
I don’t know how many times we landed on ‘warm weather’ (3 alternative ways to describe warm weather) but each time we did, the challenge got greater as you’re not supposed to use the same word twice.
We laughed and laughed some more as our brains started to break under the pressure. If you have a go, I hope you enjoy it.
Our goal at Clara James Tutoring is to make learning fun and accessible to everyone. If children are engaged in what they are doing they are more likely to want to participate, if they are enjoying it, they are more likely to relax and retain the information.
If they are retaining the information it will help boost their knowledge and with knowledge comes confidence.
If you have a child who enjoys learning through games and being more creative, and you enjoy spending time with them, you might be interested in the Clara James Approach, the membership group we have put together to support you in supporting your primary school aged child with their maths and English.
Interested?
Click here to learn more: The Clara James Approach
Morning,
I hope the week is going well.
So many people seem to be doing D of E and work experience
at the moment, good luck if that’s you and if you’re at Marlow Camp next
fingers crossed for good weather!
I’ve just finished a lesson on division. It seems to be
something that messes with the brains of so many people.
I found it got easier when I stopped thinking about it as
division and instead thought about it as multiplication. So, if for example I
had the question 396 divided by 3, I would look at it as 3x what = 3. My answer
would be 1. How many times would I need to multiply 3 to get to 9, (my answer
would be 3). Then 3x something = 6. My answer would be 2. Giving me the overall
answer of 132.
I know that’s a really simple example but hopefully it explains
my point.
Thankfully in schools they don’t often seem to need to do
long division, but I’ve worked with a couple of adults (generally nurses for
some reason) who have needed it.
I think I’ll explain this one in a video, as it will be too
complicated to explain it with words as bits get put all over the place. I hope
this makes sense though:
Enjoy the rest of the week and speak soon,
Dawn