There are many routes into teaching, yet not all of them have to lead to the profession of the class teacher or university lecturer.
The role of a tutor is another career path to explore if you are curious about teaching, but perhaps prefer not to do so in a traditional academic setting or with large groups of students.
There are tutors for just about any subject you can think of, and most tutors will deliver one-on-one classes, personalising the material to the student in front of them. It’s also becoming increasingly common to have online classes between tutor and student, especially in light of the pandemic.
With Superprof, you can do either. You can find local students near you for GCSE tuition, or you can take your classes online and work from home if you prefer.
There are various levels one can tutor at, but in this guide, we’re going to focus on the experience of the GCSE tutor which includes online GCSE tutors and how you can become one. We’ll take a look at the journey to becoming a GCSE English tutor, a GCSE maths tutor, a GCSE science tutor, and we’ll also briefly consider what qualifications you might need.
How to Tutor GCSE English
GCSE English is a tough subject for many, especially if they don’t believe in their writing ability or are more gifted at logic-based subjects like maths and science.
Yet it can also be a very rewarding subject to teach as an English tutor since you essentially have free reign when it comes to the exercises you assign and resources you use.
You can lean on the greats such as Shakespeare and Chaucer to help your student improve their English proficiency, or you can take a modern approach and come up with your own creative writing exercises and texts for them to study.
What’s most important if you’re considering taking on the role of GCSE tutor is that you are willing to adapt, since every student you teach will take information onboard in their own way. Not every student will respond how you expect them to, so even if you feel like you have some excellent lesson plans and exercises, you need to be willing to change your approach if it isn’t working.
Check out teach English online jobs here.
Get Creative
While it may seem unorthodox, multimedia can be a valuable resource in your lesson plans for GCSE English. Whether it’s scenes from a Shakespeare play or spoken word poetry, video and audio can help your student come to terms with concepts such as structure, emphasis, and alliteration.
You can also throw games into the mix if you think that could aid comprehension.
Grammar rules, whether you study them in your native language or a foreign language, can be tedious to learn. As a result, you might consider creating fun exercises or games that revolve around core grammar rules or literary techniques.
That way, you can help your students wrap their heads around complicated ideas in simple and straightforward ways.
For GCSE English especially, you’ll also want to take a back seat as often as you can without interrupting the flow of your lessons.
Ask your students questions, probe them about the text in front of them, and try to elicit critical responses as much as possible. Critical thinking is hard to teach, as it’s something a teacher can’t do for you. As such, do your best to encourage your students to open up so they can come to their own conclusions and more easily turn those thoughts into sentences and paragraphs.
Learn to teach English online jobs here.
How to be a GCSE Maths Tutor
If you’ve always been a maths whizz, and your brain operates on the plane of logic more often than not, then you’d likely make a great maths GCSE tutor or online GCSE maths tutor.
However, it’s important to note that proficiency or skill in a certain subject doesn’t always guarantee that you’ll be a good teacher of it.
So how can you be the best GCSE maths tutor in your area?
Well, the first thing to do is choose an exam board, since this will determine what curriculum you’ll be drawing from in your lessons.
What follows should of course be a determined effort on your part to completely familiarise yourself with the content of the relevant exam board specification. There are also tiers within GCSE to consider, from Foundation to Higher tier, so it’s worth thinking about what level you’d like to teach at.
Once all that is squared away, you’ll want to collect a host of resources you can draw upon for your maths classes. These resources could take the form of GCSE textbooks or interactive websites such as everyone’s favourite: GCSE Bitesize.
Now all that’s left to do is create interesting lesson plans (easier said than done) for each of your students, that focus on one or two concepts in the relevant curriculum. Try not to bite off more than you can chew in a single lesson, as you can never anticipate how long it will take a student to grasp a concept.
Behind the theory, you should also have a lot of practical exercises prepared, so that you can have your student drill them for practice. It’s also a good idea to get creative when possible and create real-world problems for your students to solve using concepts they’ve learned in the lesson.
With Superprof, if you sign up as a tutor, there’s a good chance that local students who type in ‘GCSE tutor near me’ will find your profile and be able to take your classes.
See how you can become a tutor London here.
How to Tutor Science GCSE
Science is a subject that has the potential to be endlessly fascinating, yet many students have had bad experiences with it.
It’s boring. It’s difficult. It’s pointless.
These are common complaints among students, so as a GCSE science tutor you may well have to dispel these ideas with interesting lesson plans.
The key to GCSE science is creating a connection between the student and the material you’re trying to teach them. Knowing about the anatomy of a lizard isn’t as interesting as seeing it scurry away from snakes, as seen in the viral Planet Earth video.
Young learners want to see science lessons played out in real-world scenarios.
While you may well be limited in what you can do as a GCSE science tutor, you can always improvise and think outside the box.
How can you take the theory you teach and make it interesting to the student in front of you?
Maybe you can find some engaging visual materials that make the information more compelling, or maybe you can use an online game to teach a valuable lesson about objects’ properties or how atoms behave.
Before you start teaching GCSE science, you will of course want to brush up on the various branches or go all-in on one so you can market your tutoring services accordingly. As a GCSE biology tutor, you will obviously spend time studying different subject matter than if you were a physics and maths tutor GCSE.
It’s also important that you try to establish rapport with your students since this is often key. If you want them to pay attention to your words and engage in the class, then you need to have them on your side.
It’s no good lecturing at them if they aren’t taking anything on board.
To build rapport, you want to make sure you come across as friendly and open to questions. You want to create an ideal learning environment in which the student doesn’t feel afraid to ask questions at any point, and never feels dumb or stupid for not knowing something.
Find more tutoring jobs here on Superprof.
What Qualifications do you need to be a GCSE Tutor
We have to preface the following information by saying that in the eyes of the law, anyone can become a private tutor regardless of qualifications.
However, if you want to be a tutor, there are many things that will work in your favour. For example, you’ll need to have achieved a grade C/4 or higher in GCSE English, maths, and science. If you haven’t got these grades, then you’ll have to go through an organisation such as the NEC to take the necessary qualifications.
Then again, if you want to become a Spanish GCSE tutor, for example, relevant qualifications in the language such as a proficiency certificate would be more suitable.
There are many undergraduate and postgraduate courses that can help you secure classes as a private tutor, even though they aren’t strictly necessary.
If you’ve taken a degree in an unrelated subject to what you want to teach, you have the option of taking an SKE (subject knowledge enhancement) course. An SKE course will get you up to speed on the subject you wish to teach, so it can be valuable if you haven’t got the right skill set for the subject in question.
Another factor that can influence your pursuit to become a GCSE tutor is the amount of time you’ve spent acquiring experience in schools.
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