This one-on-one private tutoring course is for young learners who need help with English related concepts in regard to reading, phonics, spelling, writing, and grammar. All listed group courses are now offered privately for your convenience. 

Classes will meet five times a week for 30 minutes at a time.

At Shields Scholars, we have an array of English and reading courses ranging from very beginner and learning letter sounds to leveled reading and context reading up to level I. In terms of age, these academic abilities generally range from 3 years old up to about 8 years old.

For one-on-one tutoring, you and your learner choose which areas they need help with. See course lessons offered below and their summaries. The courses are listed in order starting with very beginner and slowly advancing from there. You can see how many lessons each course contains, but you are under no obligation to finish one course before moving onto the next one. Please be in communication with your teacher on if the lessons are too easy or too difficult and we will adjust your future lessons as need be as your child advances their skills. Your teacher will also give you feedback and help you determine which course would benefit your child the most based on their immediate needs.

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NEARPOD:
All courses use NearPod, which is an interactive resource for learners to use and participate in during the lessons. NearPod has games of all kinds relevant to the lesson at hand to help with engagement and retainment of information and lesson materials. 

If you are new to NearPod, below is a parent/guardian demo lesson for you to experiment with  and see first hand whether your child will enjoy it or not. **NearPod is COPPA compliant and an approved Outschool resource.**
You can access NearPod lessons from either the website or the app. 

For the parent demo lesson copy/paste this link to your browser: https://app.nearpod.com/?pin=w5knu
-OR-
Download the NearPod application on a tablet or smartphone and enter code: w5knu

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COURSES BY AGE:

Beginners: (3+ years old)

READING CAN BE PUZZLING: CVC WORD BLENDING, PHONICS, AND SPELLING PRACTICE (30 Lessons)

This course teaches 4 letters (1 vowel and 3 consonants) and their phonetic sounds in each lesson. We focus heavily on using synthetic phonics when teaching each letter and practice relating each letter sound to real-life pictures for context. Then, we work on CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) blending with the letters relevant to the lesson by using puzzle pieces. Finally, each lessons ends with learning 3-4 "popcorn words" (sight and high frequency words) to work on linear reading. Each word is paired with a silly photo acting as a mnemonic device to aid in memory. Mostly, this exercise is to begin the habit of reading left to right, only reading what they see on the page, and confidence building. 

**Synthetic phonics is when words are broken down to the smallest units of sound, called phonemes, then blended together to sound out the word correctly with no additional sounds or guessing. An example of using synthetic phonics versus traditional or analytic phonics, would be learning the letters /Mm/, /Nn/, or /Ll/. Traditionally, children learned that the /Mm/ sound said, 'muh, muh, muh' and the /Ll/ sound said, 'la, la, la'. This makes decoding and blending words much more difficult because adding the 'uh' sounds at the end also adds an unnecessary vowel and sometimes extra syllable. If we taught beginning readers to sound out the word 'milk', for instance, it would be broken down as 'muh-i-la-k'. 'Muhilak' does not sound the same as 'milk'.**

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READING CAN BE PUZZLING: LONG VOWELS (10 Lessons)

This course is a bit more difficult than the above course and is for learners who know their letters, phonetic sounds, and more or less how to blend simple CVC words together independently.
This course focuses on using vowel digraphs and long vowel sound patterns often used in English for all 5 vowels - a, e, i, o, and u. Long vowel sounds are easy to remember, but the spellings and patterns often are not. For example, the long /a/ sound can be spelled using the following rules:
Bossy 'e' - cake
ai - pair
ay - say
eigh - freight
Open syllables - baby

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Intermediate:

READING CAN BE PUZZLING: POPCORN WORDS (27 Lessons)

This course specifically teaches sight and high frequency words such as: the, a, some, my, on, in, between, etc.
The concepts of sight and high frequency words are often used interchangeably, but the definitional differences are in that we recognize sight words as words that are often unable to be "sounded out" or that do not follow traditional phonics rules. We memorize what they look like and recognize the word as a whole rather than independent phonemes (the, some, have, give). High frequency words are a bit different in that they do follow phonetic English rules, but they are so often used that we teach them similarly to sight words and to be remembered as wholes (this, he, his). This course is extremely helpful for learners to take prior to beginning leveled reading courses since it is taught in an organized fashion and in a way that makes sense from start to finish.

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Leveled Reading  

Leveled Reading Courses Coming Summer 2022!

These classes will focus on reading actual stories and using conversation, context clues, and pictures to aid in comprehension and reading skills. The classes will be organized in a linear fashion using story themes.

Level C (10 Lessons)
"From Seaing to Reading"
Stories will use plenty of CVC words and a few sight words, but repeat throughout the story to aid in memory and confidence.
Theme: Sea Adventures

Level D (10 Lessons)
"Dino Reading Club"
Stories will be longer with more adjectives and adverbs and varying sentence formations. Stories will begin to include simple digraphs (th, ph, sh, and ch) and using more long vowels.
Theme: Dinosuars 

Level E (16 Lessons)
Stories will begin to vary more and more and follow a more complex structure. They will also include more consonant digraphs (th, ph, sh, ch) and vowel digraphs (ai, ea) as well as diphthongs.
Theme: Aliens



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POLICIES

REFUNDS:
All Ongoing classes have a standard refund policy: "Cancel subscription at any point, no refund for past subscriptions. Payments can be refunded within 24 hours of purchase."

Refunds will not be issued for any case of a student no-show in which the student misses class. Our schedule holds a dedicated spot for your child each week. In the event that your child misses class, your payment is a reservation of that time that cannot otherwise be utilized by, scheduled for, or transferred to another student. Additionally; no refunds or makeup classes will be issued for class time lost due to students/parents being unprepared for class. Please read the full class description before enrolling to ensure you can be fully prepared come class start time. Upon enrollment, please be sure to turn on email notifications for messages and classroom post updates sent by your learner's teacher.

TRANSFERS:
Transfer requests will be accepted if the request is sent no less than 24 hours prior to the class start time and only for ongoing courses. If you have something come up and cannot make your section time, please send me a transfer request as soon as possible for another time during that same week. In the event of a one-time transfer and you would like your child moved back to their original section day/time, you need to send another transfer request or your child will stay in the current section. 

There will be no transfers for student no shows under any circumstances.

ABSENCES & STUDENT NO-SHOWS:
A student no-show is defined as a student absence with no prior arrangements made with the teacher.
There will be no refunds or transfers for student no-shows under any circumstances. 

In cases of no-shows for private classes or classes that happen to only have one learner, it is Outschool's policy that the class is automatically cancelled if no student shows up after 10 minutes have elapsed and you forfeit your payment for that class. If you have a private class, ALWAYS reach out before class starts if there is a reason you cannot make it.

Absentees are entitled to the class recorded as well as a student-paced NearPod lesson that parents can navigate with their student while watching the recording. Student-paced lessons are usually not put out publicly, so please message your teacher for access!

MAKEUP CLASSES:
Makeup classes are not offered at this time for group classes. Please message your teacher if you require a makeup time for a private class. We will reschedule a maximum of 3 times. All makeup requests need to be scheduled within 24 hours of the original class cancelation and cancelations need to be communicated no less than 24 hours before the originally scheduled lesson. 

OUTSCHOOL POLICIES:
Only the enrolled student is admitted into the classroom and allowed to be on screen and participating in the class. Students may share a screen if and only if they are both enrolled into the class and in that same section. Friends, cousins, parents, siblings, etc. are not permitted to be on screen at all.

When entering your Zoom meeting, please make sure that your screen name matches your learner's name on the roster OR the enrolling parent's name on their profile. Any other names will not be admitted into the classroom due to safety and privacy concerns. If we as teachers cannot verify who is entering, it is against Outschool's policy to admit them.

Every student must turn on their video for teachers to verify that there is, in fact, a child in the classroom due to privacy and safety concerns. If you prefer your child not be on camera, you need to contact Outschool prior to the class to be "verified" beforehand. Refusing to turn on your camera for teachers to verify a child will result in removal from the Zoom meeting immediately.

Only one Zoom account will be admitted into the classroom per student. All Zoom meetings are recorded. Parents and/or guardians are not authorized to watch the class from a second device, but all class recordings are available in the classroom page for your viewing after the class has concluded. Some recordings may be deleted if something inappropriate happens during the lesson i.e. nudity or offensive behavior.

Thank you for your understanding!