My student will be on holiday for 5 weeks, thus missing out on 2 weeks of term 1 and the first week of term 2. Because of this, we are trying to get her ahead in her school maths topics. However this is proving difficult as there are some topics that she does need time to learn, particularly as there are many new concepts that require a lot of practice. At the same time, she does not enjoy maths yet so i don’t want to make her like it even less by giving too much homwork.


You should be upfront and honest about the serious impact that a 5 week gap will cause and that lots of work will be required to patch this up. It is important that the student has accurate expectations about this but make sure not to overwhelm her by focussing too much on the challenge. The goal is to help the student understand what amount of work will be required to catch up so that she is perpared. Also, when tutorials resume you may want to organise a few extra tutes for the first couple of weeks to catch her up and make the transition easier.


Regarding the tutorials/content that will be missed – you will need to move as far forward as possible before she leaves. At least try to introduce the concepts and get her to do some homework for these topics. It is quite likely that the student will forget the most recent content learned before holidays unless measures are taken to prevent this. Make sure to set some homework for the holidays but:

  • Don’t set too much otherwise the student won’t do it, or, won’t do it properly.
  • Make sure the student is ok with what you set and agrees to do it.
  • Set easier, revision style homework for the holidays because
    • the student is more likely to do it
    • the goal is to prevent her from forgetting everything and even minimal study will achieve this

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