Dreaming Spires Revision

Dreaming Spires Revision topped out at twenty student this year! Dreaming Spires hit the maximum this year! Dr Patrick taught the twenty iGCSE students from her home-town of Texas over the fortnight of Easter holidays, using the break from her other tutorial classes to visit her ailing father at the same time. However, the internet allows people to attend from all over -- Austria was on the list, too! Except for the threat of a thunderstorm and a powercut, the ten daily lessons went without a hitch. Dr Patrick even worked out how to record each class and load it onto the unlisted YouTube channel. (It helped that the house where she was staying had super-fast broadband.) Some of the famous sayings from the course were "Rolling on the Bed Laughing", "That's just the say it is," and "I know! That's bonkers!!!". ROTBL Now all the students have taken their mock exams and Dr P has returned them. Some really great work, including two per...

The response for this year's crammer course has been the best ever -- fifteen registered students even with a month to go! Welcome Packs to all those fully paid were posted yesterday, and probably to their horror, they have been give homework already! If you are hoping to join us for Easter but haven't contacted me yet, please do so ASAP. I have some wiggle room with class limits, and if demand is evident, it's possible that a second group could be started at a different time. Is your child still a year or two away from taking the English iGCSE? Then why not consider our sister course, Dreaming Spires Home Learning . Combine literature with our writing add-on for all the the skills of iGCSE English. Courses have started for 2015, but you can choose mid-term entry after Christmas for 2016 if you'd like to.

If you want to prepare your child for the CIE iGCSE English Language (First Language) exams -- known as the 0500 syllabus -- then what better way than to sign up for an online two-week crammer course over the Easter holidays with an experienced CIE examiner? For the third year, I'm offering my ten-hour crammer course where we meet online daily for an hour's live webinar, plus you get email contact, short homework assignments, and a marked mock exam -- all in good time for the early May exam dates. Best of all, I have frozen the course fee at £75 for 2015, and siblings get a 50% discount. Referrals get a 10% discount. Space is limited to fifteen students, eight places of which are already booked up -- so don't delay in contacting me and reserving a place for your child. Details of Easter 2015 Crammer Course for CIE iGCSE in English Language: Dates: 30 March - 10 April, daily Time: 3-4 pm BST Cost: £75 Dr Kat Patrick has a PhD and PGCE in English, examines fo...

Many of us in the homeschooling community in the UK have been on tenterhooks after learning that the Government had ruled out iGCSEs in English Language as an accepted qualification to study free at FE colleges. This meant that homeschooled students in the near future were going to have to either do one of three things: find an exam centre that would not only offer GCSE exams to private candidates, but also provide a way for them to satisfy the moderated speaking/listening portion of English exams; or take GCSE English in the FE college at post-16; or take the iGCSE as per usual, but hope that it wasn't further eroded as a qualification at, say, university. So, I can't express my appreciation enough to our hard-working colleagues (and presumably, plenty of independent schools who also take iGCSEs) who have finally broken through the stalemate and received word that the Government has u-turned on this. Here is an extract from the ruling: We have decided, foll...

In the past, Dreaming Spires Revision has been run as a crammer course just before the exam season -- a 10-day, one-hour-a-day intensive blast of all the tips and tricks that I, as an experienced examiner, can throw at a student. The success rate of As and A*s for Dreaming Spires students have been more than 90%, so I'm convinced that the formula and format work. However, due to popular demand, Dreaming Spires Revision will be offered as a one-hour weekly online course instead of a crammer course starting from this September. All the same tips and tricks, but at a more leisurely pace! The day and time is to be determined, but likely to be Friday or Wednesday morning. Classes need a minimum of 5, but not more than 15, and enrollment works on a first come-first served basis. Cost is £75 per person, with a 50% discount for siblings. Referrals also receive discounts. Please contact me at dreamingspiresrevision@gmail.com ASAP to reserve your space. Important!  Dreaming Spir...

This is my first foray into running Dreaming Spires as a short course -- that is, over a 2-day tutorial rather than the usual 10 days. My clever attempt to show Dreaming Spires as a "short" course Needs must when students are otherwise booked up and unable to fit the usual schedule, and that, of course, is the beauty of dealing with an individual tutor rather than an institution that's not flexible. If you were hoping to sign up for an iGCSE tutorial but just couldn't fit it in, then why not either jump on tomorrow's two-day version, or talk to me about setting up the short version for yourself and some friends?

All Dreaming Spires Revision courses have two parts to them.   One part is available 24/7. This includes forums (like email), presentation files which I upload after class, and resource materials which are helpful to have for revision.                The other part of the course is the live portion, when I give talks via my computer, using slides for illustrative purposes, all the while having students type their text-based chat in an additional window on screen.  Once the ten days’ live class portion of the course finishes, your child should set aside time to sit the two papers as though they were the real exams, and then send them to me.  I will mark them and return them. Should your child wish to have any additional tuition beyond the revision course itself, I also offer one-on-one tuition on-line via this same delivery system, or by Skype.  You can make enquiries about schedules and costs for this at any time...