Connect with Prospective Families.
Firstly, sign-in and make a listing and make sure to be clear that you are offering sessions as part of the £5 for 45 campaign. Use the campaign name £5 for 45 in the title. It’s important to reply promptly to messages received on the platform. This will ensure you can plan the times and days for your sessions in advance, therefore earning as much pocket money as possible for yourself and helping families effectively.
Be Prepared
Although it’s not necessary to do hours of preparation in advance, it’s important to be a little prepared for the session. If it’s your initial contact with the family, you should know beforehand what subjects they need help with, the age of their child, etc. For each session you should have an idea of how you will help the child to learn - an activity or two, talking them through what’s asked of them, etc.
Use Zoom to Conduct your Session
Zoom is a suitable platform for online tutoring. It is easy to sign up to, free for all one-to-one calls and is straightforward to use. If your client (i.e the parents of the child you are tutoring) would prefer to use a different application eg Google Hangouts this is suitable also.
With Zoom, the clients do not need to have an account to attend a video meeting. However you, the tutor, will need to have an account to provide a link to the video meeting to your client. To do this:
- Google “zoom video call”
- Create an account with your email and password
- Under “Personal” click into “Meetings” and “Schedule a Meeting”
- The website/app will prompt you to include participants emails and provide a dial-in number
Introduce Yourself and the Session Plan
Say hello and give a brief introduction of yourself - name, age, education level, where you’re from. If it’s not your first session, have a brief chat about how they’ve been finding the work, how they feel about what has been planned for today’s session.
Setting out the plan for the session is an important step in providing direction to your session. Everyone should have a clear idea of what is going to be achieved/ worked on in the session, and it should be manageable within the 45 minutes time frame.
Conduct the Session
Begin your session and work through the material. It’s important to check in with the child to make sure they are understanding the work, if you are going too fast or slow, etc. Make sure to keep an eye on the time. Make note of where extra work should be followed up and perhaps include this in an email to the parent/guardian.
Managing Payments
To charge payments, you would need to connect your account to MyPocketSkill platform by doing the following:
Note: this needs to be parent's details and account info if you are currently under 18.
To learn more about our Levelling Up payment system for teens, click here.
Login, Search and View our Listings
The easiest way to take advantage of the £5 for 45 promotion is to login to MyPocketSkill and then search through the available listings. You should quickly be able to find a capable young person who is listing the skills that you require. You can filter our listings by task type or search for a specific skills (e.g. "dance" or "chemistry").
Book a Capable Young Person
Once you have found the listing you want, it is then simple to make a booking. Click on the "Request Task" button. You can make a booking immediately and add a message to your booking, for example with a requested date and time. Don't worry if you need to change or cancel this later - no money transfers at this stage, it is just placing a booking.
Funds are safely held by our payment provider and it is transferred to the young person only when you mark the task as complete at the end.
Arranging the Session
Use our messaging service to communicate with the young person about the session (time, date, video call links etc.). Let them know your preferences and any specific requests (e.g. if your child is learning a particular piece of music or studying a particular part of the academic syllabus). Also, remember to check your spam folder as sometimes our system messages and alerts can end up there.
Participating in the Session
It is common for parents/carers to help in setting up the online session and often to stick around for the first few minutes, to ensure that everything is running smoothly. Some parent choose to stay for the whole session, at least to begin with, until everyone is comfortable.
Payment and Rebooking
At the end of the session you will be asked to mark the task as complete and this will trigger the payment to be transferred. It's simple at this point to rebook by going back into the original listing. Do please also provide a review at the end of the session to help our young people to build their reputation on the site.
To learn more about our Levelling Up payment system for teens, click here.
Any questions? Email us on: