1:1 Tutoring - 25 Minute Session - English: Handwriting Without Tears or Reading

In this class I will customize our session to best meet the needs of your child based off of what you want me to teach your child.  Depending on what you want for your child our first session will either be a Reading Assessment or we will begin with the letter F for Handwriting Without Tears, or we can work on just basic phonics.  If you want your child to focus just on lowercase letter handwriting we will begin with the lowercase letter c.

I was trained by Learning Without Tears to use their curriculum Handwriting Without Tears.  I have also been trained by Zoo Phonics to use their curriculum.  Given my experience as a former preschool teacher, Kindergarten teacher, and 4th grade teacher, as well as my experience teaching all ages on Outschool for the past 5 years I am confident in my abilities to create my own curriculum for beginning reading, for instance, blending, segmenting, rhyming, alliteration, syllables, deletion, and addition of phonemes.  

BEFORE OUR FIRST CLASS PLEASE MESSAGE ME TO LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU WANT US TO FOCUS ON.  IF I DO NOT HEAR FROM YOU BEFOREHAND THEN WE WILL BEGIN WITH HANDWRITING.


******HANDWRITING WITHOUT TEARS******
Handwriting Without Tears curriculum follows a unique pattern in which the letters are taught by how they are written as opposed to alphabetical order.  The letters are grouped as follows:
*Frog Jump Capitals (F, E, D, P, B, R, N, M): These letters all start in the top left corner with a big line on the left, and a frog jump back up to the top left corner. When the first line is on the left, the next part is on the right side. This prevents reversals, while teaching good stroke habits.
*Starting Corner Capitals (H, K, L, U, V, W, X, Y, Z): These letters all start on the left and use the left-to-right formation habit. Printing follows the same order as reading (top-to-bottom and left-to-right).
*Center Starters (C, O, Q, G, S, A, I, T, J): These letters start at the center of the top and the letters C, O, Q, and G start with the Magic C stroke. Learners will form good habits with C, O, S, T, and J that will make learning c, o, s, t, and j much easier! There will be no problems with stroke direction or reversals.
*Same as Capitals (c, o, s, v, w, t): The first 5 letters are exactly like their capitals, just smaller. Lowercase t is made like T, it’s just crossed lower.
*Magic C Lowercase (a, d, g): These high frequency letters begin with the familiar Magic C stroke.
*More Vowels (u, i, e): Here are the rest of the vowels.  The focus will be on careful placement and size.
*Transition Group (l, k, y, j): These letters are familiar from capitals. The focus will also be on careful placement and size.
*Diver Letters (p, r, n, m, h, b): These letters start with the same pattern: dive down, come up, swim over!  We avoid b and d confusion by separating the letters and teaching them in different groups.
*Final Group (f, q, x, z): The letter f has a tricky start. Letter q is taught here to avoid confusion with the letter g.  Letters x and z are familiar, but infrequently used.

Why learn capital letters before lowercase letters? Children who learn capitals first, also learn 3 things: 1. Start the letters at the top.  2. Use the correct stroke sequence to form letters.  3. Orient letters and numbers correctly - no reversals!  Think about it, c, o, s, v, w, x, y, and z are the same as their capitals; j, k, t, and u are also similar to their capital partners.  After learning the proper strokes to write capitals, learners will be prepared to write nearly half of the lowercase alphabet.