A case study in Structuring a programme
Billy – a ten year old – was preparing for a scholarship exam and enlisted PFL to help him. Billy’s family has lived in Hong Kong for about five years now after emigrating from Australia in 2012. Billy has been performing well at Kellet International School, but his family decided that the time had come for him to return home. They decided to enrol Billy in a bespoke tutoring programme to prepare him for the ACER scholarship exam. The assessment – necessary for admission into an Independent Australian school – includes two extended writing tasks designed to evaluate how clear and creative a student’s expression is. It was here that Billy’s family needed PFL’s help.
Here, we will cover some of the strategies we used to structure our lessons with Billy to get him prepared for the ACER – culminating in him gaining admission into Newington College. We’re very proud of our work with Billy, and hope you get an idea of how we structure our programmes to meet the needs of the individual student
BUILD A RELATIONSHIP
After an introductory lesson with a senior consultant and a discussion with Billy and his parents, PFL were able to recommend which areas Billy could most improve on and familiarise him with the ACER exam criteria and format. Our consultants chose Ms Sian as Billy’s tutor. Her fresh, enthusiastic youthfulness meant that she and Billy immediately got along! This helped keep Billy engaged in exam preparation, despite the otherwise dreary content. Her energy was matched by her technical expertise: she helped support Billy in best practices for writing by building his vocabulary, sentence fluency, organisational skills and so on. Throughout the programme, Ms Sian was in close contact with Billy’s parents, either through text or face-to-face. This helped reassure them that Billy was on track for the exam and gave them a forum to pass on their observations and suggestions based on Billy’s writing tasks which Ms Sian could design targeted lessons for each week. This continual but non-intrusive assessment and flexibility to adjust lesson content accordingly made for a comfortable, cooperative approach.
FIND WHAT WORKS
Before he could craft an entire essay, Billy needed some advice on how to structure his writing. While naturally creative, it was essential to teach him some sure-fire strategies which could guarantee good writing. Ms Sian responded to the family’s request to practice non-fiction writing by themed lessons based on informative, persuasive, argumentative and explanatory prose. Each time, Billy and Ms Sian would study a style model before putting the piece’s linguistic devices and awareness of audience into practice. Every week, they would plan the next lesson so that Billy got a say in his own education.
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE
Once we had laid the foundations, the next step was to improve Billy’s natural written expression and how he organised his ideas. Each week, Billy would complete a written task as homework for Ms Sian to review in the following lesson. Her creativity meant that she could quickly adapt to whatever specific issues came up during the read through; with her designing grammar lessons on the fly. By focusing on the areas where Billy most stood to improve, she was able to correct his habitual errors that hadn’t been picked up with or dealt with by his school teachers. For example, Billy became more aware of his tendency to use lengthy sentences by hearing them read aloud and rephrased by Ms Sian on a weekly basis.
PROGRESS
Ultimately, we can’t be there for the examination. It’s important to make sure that the child is prepared to take the exam on their own. Billy needed to show that he could express himself effectively and respond creatively to very little information. While early lessons focussed on developing a repertoire of tools to compose his thoughts coherently, Ms Sian used the latter stages of Billy’s programme to encourage him to be an independent learner. As he was incredibly creative, Billy had little trouble when coming up with ideas. However, with only twenty-five minutes to produce an answer, it was making sure that he could select the most innovative and interesting ones that was the challenge. The pair discussed how to create organised and well-structured writing by helping Billy reframe his first drafts sentence by sentence and word by word to make sure that they hit perfection. Once they’d got a handle on this, Ms Sian challenged Billy to write against the clock; drafting essays alongside him to encourage him to up his pace. They read through each other’s work as peers, making sure that Billy was constantly exposed to exemplars so he could reflect on how to improve his own writing. By the end of the programme, Billy was able to independently approach ACER-style tests with the intelligence and wisdom required to mould his vividly imaginative ideas into well-crafted compositions without feeling pressured by the time limit.
RESULTS
Billy’s family were ecstatic with the progress he made under Ms Sian’s tutelage. He acquired a skillset which could help with not just his scholarship assessment but for a successful future in any further English studies as well. They asked Ms Sian to continue Billy’s tuition once she was done preparing him for the ACER – in large part at Billy’s behest. Ms Sian had helped foster a love of learning and language in Billy, true to our agency’s name. We can’t wait to help him make a smooth transition to Australia so he can keep up his passion for language once he’s back
