Monday, February 2, 2009

After School Lessons Can Boost Your Child's Confidence To Achieve

By Clarissa Kyriakos

Many parents have to work hours that extend past the school day due to the pressures of modern day living. This requires some careful organisation and the need to arrange some type of after school care for their children. This may include some sort of after school club, an extra curricular activity, some sort of activity club, going home with a friend or child care arrangements. Some parents feel that their children need extra help with lessons to prevent them falling behind their peers with their learning and will find out about after school lessons from a private tutor. These after school lessons should not be confused with child care as they are specific to the learning and progress their child makes in specific areas of learning.

Very often parents are not made fully aware of the progress their child is making in specific areas of learning. The annual report is one way of finding out information but this is just once a year and often at the end of a school year. Parent evenings are another way of finding out about progress and it is often at these meetings that parents are first made aware that their child may be having difficulties. This is the time when parents might then consider some extra lessons after school to help their child with their learning.

Children who have been recognised by the school as having special educational needs may require after school lessons. The child will have specific targets in the form of an individual education plan and if the progress is slow then after school lessons will help stimulate progress.

Many tutors that offer after school lessons will make a consultation and discuss with the parent and often the child as to what the specific problems are. The problems may be across several subjects but it is often best to concentrate on just one subject during the after school lessons as too many different subject objectives can be confusing. Children that require after school lessons need to have consistent teaching with consolidation and repetition of key learning skills to make good progress.

The most popular request for after school lessons are from parents of primary age children. Children that are finding writing and reading skills difficult to grasp or finding maths concepts difficult to understand will benefit from early intervention. The earlier these needs are identified then the child is less likely to fall behind in their learning. Parents will need to do some research in finding the best tutor suitable for teaching the after school lessons. There are many ways to find a good tutor for after school lessons. Parents may know someone else that has used a tutor and they may recommend them, a search on the internet will find many types of tutoring agencies. You may be lucky enough to find a tutor for after school lessons that you can go to directly and be able to discuss your child's needs on a more personal level than through an agency.

A good tutor will ensure that the after school lessons are exactly what is required by the parents and also the student themselves. For successful progress to be made in after school lessons good communication is vital. The child must feel comfortable with the tutor and understand the need for their after school lessons. The tutor and the student need to be open and honest and be able to express themselves if they are confused or need concepts explained in a different way. Good relationships are important and keeping to clear learning objectives with praise and rewards will help ensure that after school lessons are making a real difference to the students learning.

Some tutors prefer to visit their pupils at their own home for the after school lessons and many parents also prefer this as they do not need to transport their child elsewhere which is also time consuming and tiring for the child after a day at school. Some tutors may find it more cost-effective, one the other hand, to have pupils come to them, thereby saving on time and travel costs and making it possible to schedule back-to-back after school lessons.

Interestingly, research shows that by far the most popular subject request for after school lessons is for mathematics teaching. Secondly is English with science and then other National Curriculum subjects having hardly any requests.

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