Tutoring/ Creative Writing

[heliomum]

Hi everybody, we are looking for a native English-speaking tutor to help improve our daughter’s creative writing in preparation for next year’s 7+ exams.
Our son received offers from Westminster and St Paul’s, and we would love our daughter to attend the similar schools.We will continue working with our current maths and reasoning tutor, who is excellent at guiding children on structure, content, and how to improve their writing through clear feedback. However, as she is not a native English speaker, we are looking for an English tutor to work alongside her, focusing on writing with guidance from our existing tutor. Unfortunately, our previous English tutor is no longer available due to pregnancy.
Ideally, we are looking for someone with a proven track record of preparing children for schools such as Westminster, St Paul’s, or Bute House, and who is happy to collaborate with our existing tutor.
If you know someone suitable, please feel free to DM me. Thank you!

Heyy.. Well done for starting well in time. That's the one most important thing that most miss. Keeping discipline and pace at this stage helps ease the pressure towards the end..

Our oldest is already in St. Pauls Juniors and younger one starting in Sept and despite the popular belief, tutoring at this stage really really helps secure the concepts. That's our one tried and tested formula. We tried to self teach the oldest one initially and his love for learning started going down 🤦‍♀️ as it all became v hectic for him and us !!!

We have tried and tested many platforms and companies and tutors and have shortlisted some that we used for our younger one.

Exam Paper Plus practice papers are really v good. A notch or two trickier than the exam requirement but better to know more than less.

PrepPlus classes and courses really helped us. We joined their f2f Sunday sessions and took 1:1 online classes. Really liked the depth of their worksheets and overall found the team v helpful there.

Bond books for reasoning prep.. Ours went to 8-9 years towards the end .. the joys of starting early 😅

Mock exams are a must must... we tried EPP, Yellow Bird and PrepPlus mock exams. All v good.. think one of them offers exam specific mocks also, worth checking..

Umm that's about it I guess.. but please feel free to message if any help is needed !!!

Hi, if that helps, we booked our son with the 7+ Writing course, and they did share that we can join a free trial, and you can book too.. its 7+ Writing course from PrepPlus Limited, listed in their 7+ courses

Hi, I'm just about to launch my tutoring business and would love to help. I have 18 years teaching experience. Mostly in y2 and 3. So have very clear expectations of this year group. Creative writing is my speciality and I am incredibly passionate about helping students achieve success. My teaching career has been in state schools, but having looked over the sample papers for the 7+ they are very similar to tests we have in Wales for this age group. Sessions would take place online due to location. Please feel free to message me and we can discuss this further and see if we're a good fit. I can't see how to message you.

Thank you!! I prefer someone come to our place. Online does not work for us.

Hi Heliomum, I used an in person tutor for WUS and SPJS. I can share her details if you’d like? x

Creative writing for schools like Westminster and Bute is quite specialised. It is not just about generating ideas. Children need to learn how to structure a narrative, control pacing and use vocabulary deliberately rather than randomly.

Approaches that combine modelled writing with regular exposure to high quality texts tend to work particularly well at this age.

A lot of frustration comes when children are asked to “be creative” without being shown how.

Did you manage to find a tutor in the end?

Hi there heliomum, I'm not sure if you are still looking for somebody but just in case, I have sent you a PM.