Familiarise yourself with the Sherpa branded course content well in advance of the first lesson. You will be sent the curriculum as soon as possible after confirming your availability.

You must understand the intention of each slide of each session and know how you will deliver it to a class of 5 to 8 students.

Add to and make use of the speaker notes on the curriculum slideshow and print them if necessary to help you remember.

Your group class will be automatically added to your schedule by Sherpa, you can review and track students through your group classes page found in the sidebar of your dashboard.

You can prepare the classroom with whiteboards, documents or other resources ahead of time, just like one-to-one sessions via your bookings page.

Be aware of how to refund a group class student should they no longer be able to attend and the policy surrounding a student's eligibility to request it.

Be aware of when and how to cancel a group class if it does not reach the minimum number of students. This will automatically refund all students and message them the reason provided.

The tutor MUST teach the whole class with their camera and microphone ON and encourage all students to do the same. This is important for nurturing a safe and approachable environment while enabling clearer and more open communication between the tutor and the students. You can request individual students to turn cameras on in the classroom tools.

Get to know the process for using leader mode in the classroom and how to adjust student permissions to limit interaction content as required for participation.

Make sure you know how to mute or turn the camera off for an individual student or in extreme cases, remove a disruptive student from the class.

If a safeguarding concern is witnessed you must be aware of the process for reporting this to Sherpa. Fill out a concern form found in our safeguarding policy and contact our safeguarding officers right away.

Review the classroom guide to familiarise yourself with the multimedia tools available to you to host an engaging group class. For English, you may use collaborative document tabs for an exercise or label one for each student.

The classroom could get crowded with up to 8 students and the tutor. Remind yourself how the video layout modes work so you can organise the students and keep the focus where it needs to be.

To make use of the provided curriculum you will likely have to share screen while you use the slideshow which sometimes has essential animations built-in. Check you know how to share screen and share tabs with audio if a video example is helpful.

Keep track of any absences - give them at least 5 minutes at the start of the lesson to join and send them a message over the platform so they are notified that they are holding up the class.

Most students will be quite shy when entering a group class environment full of new people. It is up to the tutor to draw on their experience and start the group class in a manner that makes all participants feel welcome. Play a "name game" for example before moving on to some easy starter questions to encourage group participation.

Cover all slides within the time constraint. You will be able to extend each session by 10 minutes, a maximum of twice if necessary.

Be aware of how much time students have been just listening. These classes are not intended to be lectures, but interactive sessions where each student gets to be involved, voice any concerns or weaknesses and hopefully have them resolved by the end of the class - student participation is key to learning: "Who can tell me...".

Embody the "I do", "we do", "you do" lesson style wherever possible if knowledge is limited. Repetition is key to learning and confidence so facilitate ways for students to practice answering a question together, individually or with your help.

Encourage peer reviewing, marking or self-evaluation of any work. The best way to show understanding and boost confidence is to be able to teach it to someone else. You may find some students can teach each other the answer...if you let them!

On slides with questions to be answered on their whiteboard, change leader permissions so students can move around the classroom and take back control to check answers with the class.

Keep track of students who are stronger on some topics and less so on others.

You must be able to adjust the style or difficulty of an exercise should the students be of a higher or lower standard than expected. When faced with a range of skill levels, make use of the past paper or question resources provided to give each student a challenge when doing individual exercises in front of the class.

Prepare some tough examples from the resources provided to challenge excelling students with harder or more complex problems if understimulated.

If time is left at the end - always prepare an exam question or exercise from the resources provided to ensure the full time is used.

You can send any provided resources required in advance of each session to students through the messages page so they can follow along and participate, or send summarised notes or extra practice materials to the students after the session

Remind students that after the class, they will be able to access a recording of the class and review any work or lesson notes made in the online classroom.

It is not recommended to enforce homework tasks between sessions to increase the workload on school students. Provided resources can be shared if students specifically request practice exercises.