At Sullivan Tutor Academy, we’ve always been proud of our teaching materials – but they’re the product of continual refinement; we strive to iterate upon our resources constantly, making them truly excellent for as many students as possible. Of course, students are a diverse microcosm of society, each with a smorgasbord of special educational needs, disadvantages, language barriers, and much more. Some students are particularly brilliant at just about everything, for instance. So, the challenge becomes engaging everyone all at once. We know that parents naturally worry about the experience their child has in the classroom and we want you to see better results and greater confidence for your child.
This is why we look at the research, first and always. We need to know what works and what doesn’t, because we don’t feel comfortable offering a service that is subpar. We know, for instance, that notetaking can be quite useful, but there is good and bad notetaking. We’ve talked before about one such way to take notes… So we show students how to get the most out of the materials we provide. Our LMS platform, Tutor LMS, provides a centralised notetaking system, so students can take notes (see screenshot above) while watching the videos or reading through our lesson content, and review them at any time from one central place. We can finally say goodbye to misplaced exercise books that delay the progress of a lesson. And notetaking is just one small part of the puzzle – literally, we’ve got jigsaw puzzles now…
For both our younger audiences (KS3 Fun Zone coming soon) and as a way to unwind after all the quizzing, all students can appreciate an exciting way to stay engaged. We’ve previously given suggestions about staying engaged with Computer Science over the summer and in the lead up to starting school, but now our website features many of these same promises built in. In fact, we’ve just made our Summer Jumpstart Course even better than ever (and with code SEP26 you can get it for just £7!) But let’s be clear – we don’t saturate the educational quality of our teaching methods with gimmicks, of course. Each activity has been designed to offer the best educational value possible. See an example of one of my personal favourites below – lifted straight out of the GCSE course:
We launch our exam group classes in September, which we’re terribly excited about, as it means students can explore the huge variety of new activities we’ve got for them, each one carefully crafted and curated with them in mind. For our Y11s, we’ve also got some rigorous exam materials ready for them to sink their teeth into. Whether your child is aiming for a pass or pushing the highest grades, they’ll have access to an evolving library of resources.
We can’t wait to show you more soon – in fact, a sneak peak awaits you in our August masterclass – a 90 minute Zoom session, where you can learn more about Sullivan Tutor Academy, and its teaching methods. It’s aimed at parents of Y9 and Y10 students (who are also encouraged to attend), across all major exam boards, but anyone is welcome to attend and learn more. You’ll get a sample of our teaching, see the structure of our tutoring offer, and even receive some free resources along the way. You can reserve your place here.
We’ll have more to update you with soon, as well as more musings and introspection on the world of teaching, revision strategies, and more. If you’d like to learn more about how we’re changing GCSE Computer Science for the better, click here.