Jane - Biology tutor - Cerne Abbas

One of our best tutors. Quality profile, experience in their field, verified qualifications and a great response time. Jane will be happy to arrange your first Biology lesson.

Jane

One of our best tutors. Quality profile, experience in their field, verified qualifications and a great response time. Jane will be happy to arrange your first Biology lesson.

  • Hourly rate £40
  • Response Time 24h
  • Number of students 50+
Jane - Biology tutor - Cerne Abbas
  • 4.9 (11 reviews)

£40/hr

Contact
  • Biology

Experienced teacher and examiner offering Science to GCSE and Biology to A level between Dorchester and Sherborne

Lesson location

    • At Jane's house: Cerne Abbas

    • Online

Ambassador

One of our best tutors. Quality profile, experience in their field, verified qualifications and a great response time. Jane will be happy to arrange your first Biology lesson.

About Jane

I have taught in a wide variety of schools and colleges in both the state and private sector. These have included Alton College, which became designated a Beacon College for the teaching of science while I was there. I am currently a supply teacher for Dorset schools, and have been tutoring privately for about 15 years.

I have also been a voluntary youth worker and children`s worker.

Having graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Biology, as well a a Distinction in my PGCE from University of Cambridge, I was soon writing A level exam questions for AQA and marking AQA and University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate A levels. More recently I have been marking biology GCSEs for over 10 years.
I have also written revision material for the BBC Bitesize and Kerboodle (Oxford University Press) websites. I am co-author of 'Evolution', published by Oxford University Press in 2021. In 2019 I was tasked by Collins Publishers to check their new international A level biology textbook and teachers guide for errors.

My experiences in both writing exams and marking them have convinced me that exam technique is key to doing well: my experiences as a private tutor have convinced me that most teachers do not realise quite how crucial it can be!

I am flexible and can adjust myself to any ability level. I regularly help aspiring doctors to get the A they need for medical school. But I have also helped less able students improve their year 12 E grade to the C they need for nursing or undergraduate courses.

See more

About the lesson

  • Primary
  • Secondary
  • GCSE
  • +5
  • levels :

    Primary

    Secondary

    GCSE

    AS Level

    A Level

    BTEC

    Adult

    Doctorate

  • English

All languages in which the lesson is available :

English

I see one to one tutoring as a very special opportunity to develop the mind. These days both GCSEs and A levels require you to be able to apply your knowledge and understanding in unfamiliar scenarios. So our lessons are largely a dialogue, in which I explain something but then ask searching questions to probe the student's understanding. We will use resources online such as diagrams and videos as well as my own resources.

My experience is that most students know more than they think they do! However, due to the nature of classroom teaching, they tend to think along a rut, which is the flow of information as they were taught it. Exams very often expect you to 'connect the dots' - jumping between related topics in a question. There will be a certain amount of that in our lessons in order to increase your mental agility! All of this requires an active attitude to learning on the part of the student. Therefore I will expect the student to come to each lesson with a topic they feel they need help with. If they cannot think of a topic then we will look at exam questions from packs and past exam papers which I have on file and I will teach exam technique. I find that most students lose about 20% of their marks through poor exam technique!

At the same time I will monitor their progress with respect to the syllabus for the Board they are doing to ensure all topics are covered.

Many students find it more difficult to score well on questions requiring longer prose, such as the A level essay for AQA or the '6 marker' questions for several GCSE boards. We will work on the particular skills required to do well on those questions.

See more

Rates

Hourly rate

  • £40

Pack prices

  • 5h: £200
  • 10h: £400

online

  • £40/h

Details

The Superprof website tells me that I can charge for the first tutorial as well once I have 2 positive reviews, which I do. I have lots of students from other sources as well, and always am doing useful teaching right from the first tutorial. So therefore I will ask for the usual fee for the first tutorial as well. Please discuss payment with me before booking tutorials.

Find out more about Jane

Find out more about Jane

  • When did you develop an interest in your chosen field and in private tutoring?

    I decided to become a marine biologist at about the age of 7 when I was on our local beach and met a biologist looking for a species of clam which he said was very rare and our beach was a particularly good place to find it. As time went on this interest broadened to natural history and ecological biology.
    I began tutoring in about 2006 when I was teaching at a sixth form college and neighbours asked me to tutor their children in GCSE science.
  • Tell us more about the subject you teach, the topics you like to discuss with students (and possibly those you like a little less).

    I teach biology to A level and all three sciences to GCSE. Paradoxically the bits I enjoy most are the bits I liked least at school and college - in particular chemistry and molecular biology. I think that quite a lot of my interest these days is because we are now finding ways to understand how the amazing little nanomachines of molecules such as proteins work, and there are excellent computer simulations online.
  • Did you have any role models; a teacher that inspired you?

    My parents were my inspiration. Dad was a research chemist in the oil industry in Texas - developing improved catalysts for cracking oil for 20 years and then moving to work for another company with a wider remit for the last half of his career. Growing up less than 10 miles from Mission Control Houston, we were surrounded by NASA scientists and the schools encouraged us to do our own research with an annual competitive science fair for presenting our research. Both my parents helped and encouraged me in this. My mother had done a degree with a strong ecological element and some of my projects investigated the way in which the plantlife was changing along the coast as oil extraction from underground caused the land to sink.
  • What do you think are the qualities required to be a good tutor?

    A deep and extensive knowledge of the subject, joy when talking about it, and an intuitive understanding of the ways in which students can misunderstand topics. Endless patience and compassion.
  • Provide a valuable anecdote related to your subject or your days at school.

    When I was 14 I had a history teacher who taught us how to structure our notes into a numbered and lettered outline form. This meant that only odd words and phrases needed to be written down because the structuring in nested and lettered groups gave the context. This forced me to constantly evaluate and think about what the teacher was saying, rather than just madly copying everything down in sentences. As I result, by the end of the lesson I had taken in and understood the content much better than before I started using her method.
    I really disliked that teacher as she was very strict and set extremely high standards. But I owe more to her than any other teacher I can remember.
  • What were the difficulties or challenges you faced or still facing in your subject?

    The greatest challenge is keeping up to date with research into biology in order to understand complicated concepts clearly enough to explain them to A level students. I subscribe to the great science magazine New Scientist, and every so often get asked to do something more ambitious which pushes my own boundaries. Most recently this has been checking the scientific accuracy (including the answers to all the questions!) of the students' book and teachers' guide for the Collins Cambridge international A level textbook. I am also an author of the Oxford University Press's volume Evolution, which is part of its new Oxford Biology Primers series.
  • Do you have a particular passion? Is it teaching in general or an element of the subject or something completely different?

    My passion is 'awareness'. I long for people to be interested in their environment and how they relate to it - whether this is self-awareness, or understanding how the world works (ie science) as opposed to just 'knowing' things. I have discovered that many teachers treat science as 'what we know' whereas in reality the study of science is actually about asking questions and so coming to an understanding of how the world works. In the old days this was called 'natural philosophy'.
  • What makes you a Superprof (besides answering these interview questions :-P) ?

    Parent reviewers are always particularly grateful for the way in which I find areas of lack of or misunderstanding in the tutees, and then set about patiently building up an understanding from first principles. This is how I am able to not only help students achieve top grades, but also to improve their grades from bottom grades (eg E) to middling grades (B or C).
--
--

Similar Biology teachers in Cerne Abbas

  • Amy

    Poole & Online

    5 (2 reviews)
    • £40/hr
    • 1st lesson free
  • Dr. Mahmoud

    & Online

    5 (23 reviews)
    • £80/hr
    • 1st lesson free
  • Jake

    London & Online

    5 (18 reviews)
    • £55/hr
  • Michael

    London & Online

    5 (28 reviews)
    • £55/hr
    • 1st lesson free
  • Joe

    Derby & Online

    5 (16 reviews)
    • £50/hr
    • 1st lesson free
  • Akash

    London & Online

    5 (33 reviews)
    • £29/hr
    • 1st lesson free
  • Renee

    Windsor & Online

    5 (58 reviews)
    • £38/hr
  • Krish

    & Online

    4.9 (12 reviews)
    • £45/hr
    • 1st lesson free
  • Deborah

    Threekingham, Sleaford & Online

    5 (8 reviews)
    • £65/hr
    • 1st lesson free
  • Matthew

    London & Online

    5 (33 reviews)
    • £130/hr
  • Dr Amin

    & Online

    5 (7 reviews)
    • £35/hr
  • Chantelle

    London & Online

    5 (18 reviews)
    • £65/hr
  • Miriam

    Cambridge & Online

    5 (20 reviews)
    • £75/hr
  • Mylan

    London & Online

    4.9 (5 reviews)
    • £150/hr
    • 1st lesson free
  • Jones

    Goldthorpe & Online

    5 (14 reviews)
    • £50/hr
  • Qandeel

    London & Online

    5 (25 reviews)
    • £160/hr
  • Eleni

    London & Online

    5 (8 reviews)
    • £65/hr
    • 1st lesson free
  • Nika

    & Online

    5 (15 reviews)
    • £45/hr
    • 1st lesson free
  • Mert

    London & Online

    4.9 (7 reviews)
    • £28/hr
  • Nikhil

    Banstead & Online

    5 (9 reviews)
    • £50/hr
  • See Biology tutors