Secondary School English

Why Brain Train?

We only use experienced, qualified teachers with extensive knowledge and experience of teaching English. At Brain Train your child’s course will always be run by Louise O’Shea, an Oxford graduate, with almost 20 year’s experience. Louise is committed to getting the best possible result for your child in the all-important GCSE’s.

Children Benefit From Constant Hard Work

At school it’s difficult for teachers to give children as much individual attention as they might need. Yet one-to-one tuition can be a bit stressful and intimidating. At Brain Train we offer individual tuition of Maths and English in a group setting that is an ideal environment in which children can learn and improve. We make sure each child can read unaided before they join our library scheme and are able to borrow books on a regular basis. We don’t believe in gimmicks or games to trick children into learning. We no longer have computers to distract the children and waste their time, just pencils, exercise books and excellent teaching. We simply get the children to work steadily through their individual programmes of work – both in class and at home. The right work, done constantly and thoroughly with help and motivation – that’s how Brain Train tuition helps children with their school Maths and English.

Reading

Students will:

• Develop an appreciation and love of reading, and read increasingly challenging material.
• Read a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, including books, short stories, poems and plays with a wide coverage of genres, historical periods, forms and authors.
• Choose and read books independently for challenge, interest and enjoyment.
• Understand the purpose, audience for and context of the writing and check their understanding to make sure that what they have read makes sense.
• Know how language, including figurative language, vocabulary choice, grammar, text structure and organisational features helps meaning.
• Study setting, plot, and characterisation, and the effects of these.
• Make critical comparisons across texts.
• Extract and interpret information, events, main points and ideas from texts.
• Understand how meaning is constructed within sentences.

Writing

Students are taught to write:

• Accurately, fluently, effectively and at length for a wide range of purposes and audiences.
• Well-structured formal expository and narrative essays.
• Stories, scripts, poetry and other imaginative writing.
• Notes and polished scripts for talks and presentations.
• A range of other narrative and non-narrative texts, including arguments, and personal and formal letters.
• Summaries that organise material, with supporting ideas and arguments.
• Accurate grammar, punctuation and spelling; applying the spelling patterns and rules set out in English Language National Curriculum.

Also students will be able to:

• Apply their growing knowledge of vocabulary, grammar and text structure to their writing.
• Plan, draft, edit and proof-read through.
• Consider how their writing reflects the audiences and purposes for which it was intended.
• Amend the vocabulary, grammar and structure of their writing to improve its coherence and overall effectiveness.

Details

• 1 hour taught lessons on principles of English Language.
• Well motivated, interactive groups with written practice during lessons.
• Teacher guidance on practice and homework schedule at home.
• All homework is set, marked and scored by Brain Train’s experienced staff.