One-On-One Tutoring for Reading Success: 5 Lessons

Reading is a complex brain activity and a form of language processing. Each student develops its five skills at a varying pace. Those components are: Phonemic awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Fluency and Comprehension. Early childhood education includes mastery of phonemic awareness (identifying each phoneme, or sound connected to a letter). For example, knowing the letter "p" makes the "puh" sound. Phonics is the next level of reading which combines those sounds into words. 

Reading fluency includes three skills: reading with accuracy, reading at an appropriate rate and reading with expression. Many children (and adults) can read quite fast. Ask them what they've read and they can't tell you. Here, instruction focuses on strategies to improve reading fluency and ultimately, comprehension of what is read. Those methods include repeated reading and oral reading in a safe, one-on-one setting. Oral reading (as opposed to silent reading) is a proven activity to advance reading fluency. Students will also experience fluent reading from the instructor in the form of a read aloud. 

Comprehension is the goal of all reading and each session highlights and develops understanding of what is read. Strategies include activating prior knowledge and prediction.  

Vocabulary development is the fifth area of reading and each class will focus on enhancing word understanding. 

There is a direct relationship between a student's reading achievement and encouragement and motivation, which generates each learning experience here. Lastly, the Learning Goals section highlights Common Core Standards for Language Arts for third, fourth and fifth graders. These standards are an overview. Instruction is individualized, based on need. 

**My professional experience finds that hour-long, one-on-one sessions produce the best results for learning. To promote instructional/learning continuity, I provide tutoring in blocks of three-, four- or five- one-hour sessions. If interested, please message me to obtain my Tutoring Policy, which includes a break down of an hour-long session.  Thank you. Tim