Who am I and why have I created this resource?

I am Laurie Beesting. I qualified as a teacher with a Bachelor of Education Honours Degree in 1990 and taught in the British school system for over 20 years, before moving to Canada in 2011, where I began teaching maths privately, one-to-one.

My extensive teaching career has given me sound knowledge of how children learn best. I know that learning styles differ wildly, and I became a patient and inventive maths teacher, finding existing or developing my own creative, but always simple ways to get concepts across.

Whilst teaching maths one-to-one, I listed common problem areas; these became known as the ‘OFTEN-MISSING-BUT-REALLY-NEED-TO-KNOW-BITS’, and I found simple-as-possible ways to address them.

Most enquiries for 1:1 maths lessons were from parents with an ‘emergency cry for help!’... their age 10,11,12 child (or sometimes older teen) was struggling – things had been ok up to about age 9, but then somewhere along the line things seemed to go wrong: they were ‘all at sea’ – seemingly now lacking important basics, losing confidence and generally feeling anxious and frustrated about their maths... could I help?

Some of the students were in mainstream school, others were home-schooled.

For ages 10,11,12,13+ or even adults: it was about GAPS – the missing essentials... the not-being-sure-what-bits to target and check up on. And about the frustration of not knowing where to begin; the heavy feeling in the stomach of knowing that going back through all the earlier curriculum was depressing and actually not realistic or do-able.

For age 9: sometimes a parent of an age 9 child wanted to fast-track – to push ahead. Although these enquiries were in the minority, I have used the programme with some younger students who had the knowledge and maturity to cope with next-level concepts; they LOVED the feeling of ‘getting a little ahead of the game’.

Students loved the bite sized, simple approach – and it was working! Confidence was growing and skills were building. Students were animated and feeling more in control; it was wonderful to see self esteem rising. They LOVED watching the ‘I CAN / I KNOW’ statements build and took pride in ownership of being able to build the list of skills they now ‘owned’.

It was not obvious (and didn’t matter) which ‘earlier’ Year/Grade the skill was ‘from’ – so older students kept their dignity and simply enjoyed the fact they had ‘nailed it’. That felt so good... for them, and for me.

The more I thought about and planned work to help these individual students, the more I realised that what I was planning and delivering day in, day out, were the same things! Students were generally needing reinforcement of the same skills and concepts.

It dawned on me that what I was doing with my maths students could be shared with thousands more students if I told parents what I do and how I do it!

Thus, the idea of Bridge the Gap Maths™ was born.

I wanted to put ‘me and the programme’ into an easy to use book. So here I am.