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Tutoring Advice

Seeking some expert advice? E-mail the JUF TOV Literacy Project Advisors if you have a question regarding instruction, materials, strategies, or anything that involves reaching out to your student or call the TOV hotline at (312) 357-4762.

Prepare on your own by downloading the Reading with a Student (PDF) guide or search through the TOV Tutor’s Bag of Tricks

Tutor’s Bag of Tricks

Elements of the Tutoring Session

  1. Read old favorites
  2. Read together (guided reading)
  3. Write together
  4. Word study
  5. Read for enjoyment
  6. Summarize success
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Guided Reading

  1. Select a new book to read; use the “five finger test” (see Teaching Children to Choose Their Own Books) and child’s own interests to choose a book.
  2. Looking at title and pictures, discuss with the child what might happen in the story.
  3. Read the book aloud; as you read, stop and ask, “What do you think will happen next?”
  4. After reading, discuss the story.
  5. Read the book with the child. Say, “I know you can help me read this.”
  6. Encourage child to read the book out loud alone. Give assistance to support reading if child stumbles.
  7. Respond to the story.
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Teaching Children to Choose Their Own Books

Tell students to…

  1. Open your book to the middle.
  2. Open up your hand, fingers out.
  3. Read a page of the book to yourself.
  4. Put down a finger every time you find a “tricky” word.
  5. Is your thumb still up? This could be a good book for you!

If a book is on the easy side...

  • You can read it very fast.
  • You have no “tricky” words.
  • You finish quickly.
  • You enjoyed it!

If a book is on the hard side...

  • You had lots of “tricky” words and some you could not get.
  • You had to read and reread to keep the story.
  • Some parts did not make sense to you.
  • It was not fun to read.

If a book is just right...

  • You read a little slowly sometimes.
  • You figured out most of the “tricky” words easily.
  • You could think about the story while reading.
  • You enjoyed it even though you did some reading work to get it right.

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Helping Children Recognize Words

Tutors often do not know how much time they should spend teaching individual words or what kinds of strategies they can use to correct or cue students as they are reading.

In their article “Moving Learners Toward Independence: The Power of Scaffolded Instruction,” Penny L. Beed, E. Marie Hawkins, and Cathy M. Roller propose a method of word support that is strategic and focuses on figuring out words in context or from the meaning of the text.

Strategies

The word support included here was designed for the Strategic Word Attack Technique (SWAT). There are five sequential steps to SWAT that you should guide your students through.

  1. Read to the end of the sentence.
  2. Reread and look at pictures.
  3. Ask yourself, “What word that starts with this letter would make sense in this sentence?”
  4. Look at the parts of the word and blend them together.
  5. Read on or ask for help.

Verbal cues to help your student

  • Use comments that provide the least support and are global in their perspective, “Are you stuck on that word? What can you try?”
  • Direct the child to think about a specific strategy, “When something doesn’t make sense, what do you do? Have you tried rereading and looking at the pictures?”
  • Direct the child to think about a specific element of the strategy, “Did you reread the sentence to figure out what made sense?” or “Did you think about the parts of the word?”
  • Invite student performance. Identify the elements of the strategy and encourage the student to join in the task, “Remember, yesterday we asked ourselves what would make sense and then looked at the parts of the word.” Either you or the child responds by saying “We looked at the parts of the word and then put them together.” Then you lead the way by saying, “Let’s say the parts of the word.” The student blends the parts and says, “Yes, that makes sense.”
  • Model strategic thinking by identifying and naming the elements of the strategy while completing the task, “Let’s see, first I think about what would make sense, than I look at the parts of the word and put them together”

Throughout this process, encourage the child to assume the responsibility for figuring out the word. By asking “What are you going to do?” or “What would make sense?” you’ll help the child to use the SWAT strategy on her own. If the student pauses and cannot figure out a word, the tutor switches to appropriate verbal cues and modeling.

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Supporting Beginning Readers

  • Find “just right” books that match child’s interests and abilities.
  • Look for books that are predictable and accessible like series books or theme-related books
  • Teach high-frequency words
  • Teach beginning consonant & context (the cat likes to drink milk.)
  • Focus on meaning
  • Ask open-ended questions
  • Encourage child to respond to the story by retelling it, by making a story map or by writing or drawing
  • Promote fluent reading by modeling what fluent reading sounds like. Provide opportunities for rereading familiar stories

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Tutoring Children with Reading Difficulties

Familiar reading.
Have the student select several familiar books and read aloud to you. Remind the student to read so that the story sounds interesting.

Guided reading.
This strategy encourages the student to read independently with your help.

  • Select a book that includes familiar topics and that the child will be able to read.
  • Before reading the story, discuss key concepts needed to understand the story.
  • As the student reads orally, prompt him/her to use several cues (for example, the picture, the overall meaning of the story, or the initial letter of a word) to figure out unfamiliar words.
  • Stop periodically to ask, “What do you think will happen next? Why do you think that?”
  • After the student finishes reading the story, help her to retell or write the story.

Writing.
Shared writing is a strategy in which the emergent writer generates a message with your support.

  • The child says the words slowly, listening to the sounds, and then writes the sounds.
  • If the child needs help, write a word that rhymes and has the same letters as the target word, then show the child how to use known words to figure out an unknown word when writing.
  • Following the writing, copy the sentence onto a strip of paper, and cut the sentence between each word.

Word sorting.
Keeping collections of familiar words to sort into categories is a very helpful strategy with students who need to build the number of words they recognize on sight.

  • Collect words during the various activities and place them on cards.
  • Sort the words according to common characteristics. For example, sort words with common spelling patterns, common meanings, or words that belong to the same category, such as food.

Book sharing.
Read a quality trade book aloud to the child. Focus on relaxing and enjoying the story, letting the child’s imagination unfold.

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Improving Reading through Meaningful Writing

One way to encourage children to read is to have them work with writing they do themselves, often called “experience stories.” In their March 1996 article “Interactive Writing in a Primary Classroom”, Kathryn Button, Margaret J. Johnson, and Paige Furgerson propose a writing strategy for improving literacy.

Strategies

  1. The child and the tutor decide on a topic for writing. This is usually tied to a daily activity. It can be an experience, a list of characters from a story, a favorite part of a story, and invitation to parents, or a letter to a friend. Anything that is interesting or meaningful to the child is acceptable.
  2. Ask the child how to begin.
  3. The student decided on the first word or sentence.
  4. Say the word slowly with the student. The student names the sounds she hears.
  5. Use the letter names generated by the child to say the first letter of the word. Ask the child to write the letter.
  6. Say the word again with the child and discuss the sounds she hears and what letter would be next. Have the student write the next letter or letters.
  7. Continue the procedure until the word or sentence is written.

Verbal cues to help your student

  • How many words are there in our sentence?
  • Where do we begin writing?
  • After writing one word, what do we have to remember to do? Why?
  • Say the word slowly. What sounds do you hear?
  • Can you write the letter that stands for that sound?
  • Can you find the letter on our alphabet chart that we need to write?
  • What comes at the end of a sentence?
  • Would that make sense?
  • Does that look right?
  • Would you point and read what we have written so far?
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