Tutoring

For elementary school students, we work on basic reading, writing, or math skills. If the area of difficulty is decoding, or phonetic knowledge, we have tutors who are trained in research-based phonetic reading programs, such as the Orton-Gillingham method or Wilson Reading System. These programs use a structured step-by-step method to teach decoding, fluency, and spelling.

We also work with children who are having difficulty with reading comprehension, teaching specific strategies to help children understand and remember what they read. Often, reading comprehension is combined with writing skills as schools require students to write sentences or paragraphs about what they have read. Writing can be a complicated process as students need to remember letter formation, spelling, word order and their own thoughts about the topic. We help them break the process down into small steps to improve their confidence.

For math, we review or re-teach the basics, explaining the processes in a way that addresses the student’s learning style or break it down into smaller steps to increase a student’s confidence.

Middle school students sometimes have many of the same needs as elementary students—just at a higher level. Therefore, we use many of the same methods and strategies. For middle school students, we often work with the student’s homework to teach strategies and to help the tutor see where the areas of difficulty are. In other words, we use the school work to help diagnose the area of need, teach the student a strategy to help in that area, and then show the student how to apply that strategy to his or her other school work.

We also teach organization/study skills at this level to help students understand their learning style and apply organizational strategies that will help them the most. The focus on organizational skills is especially helpful for students with ADD, ADHD, or Executive Dysfunction.

For high school and college students, tutoring often focuses on a particular subject. We use the student’s school work to help diagnose the difficulty, teach strategies to facilitate the successful completion of assignments, and then help the student to practice and apply the strategies to his or her school work.

These strategies could include using a graphic organizer to plan an essay, taking notes or outlining a reading assignment, or applying a memory strategy to a math process. Tutoring in organizational skills, methods to complete homework more efficiently, and methods to prepare for different kinds of tests can also be helpful for high school and college students.

We work with adults with disabilities in basic reading, writing, and math skills. Adults with dyslexia or difficulties with English-as-a-Second-Language have made good progress in reading decoding and fluency using the Wilson Reading System.

We have also worked on business writing skills with young adults who have dyslexia or ADHD. Our tutors have worked with adults who are successful in their jobs but need help with writing organization or editing to advance in their careers.