Are you a tutor looking to make the most of your time with students? Struggling to keep their attention and make sure they are retaining the information you are teaching them? Look no further! In this blog post, we will go over how to structure a 30 minute tutoring session in a way that is engaging,
Look inside this tutoring binder to see what one elementary teacher brings to tutor struggling students in literacy and math. Lots of resource and freebies!
Planning to tutor over the summer? Here are tips for quick and easy planning! Hi there! It's Sarah! I've been tutoring kiddos for the last year and have developed a routine that makes my planning easy and my session flow smoothly. All of the kiddos I tutor are grades K-2 and in need of a boost in their reading skills...fluency, comprehension, and phonics. Warm-up I like to start with some reading that is simple or familiar. I'll either have the kiddo re-read a text from the previous session or read fluency sentences. I have my kiddos keep a composition notebook with past passages to go back and re-read. I use lots of guided reader books to find the just right text for my kiddos to read. These are also great books to leave for kiddos to practice between sessions. Fluency sentence strips from The Moffatt Girls are a GREAT help to boost fluency and confidence! They are also super easy to leave for practice between sessions. Fluency Reading Practice My kiddos have all had good sight word recognition and really need fluency work. I switch between leveled readers and text passages. I usually have kiddos read the text themselves first. After reading, we go back through the text and find words that were tricky and read them. Next, I have the kiddo read through the text with me or by themselves if they are confident. Using a leveled reader Using fluency passages and recording words read per minute (the kiddos love to see their growth!) Find these fluency passages HERE! Using text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Comprehension After some fluency practice with the selected text, I move into comprehension work. In our district, kiddos need to do a written response comprehension question as part of their reading assessment. I have my kiddos practice a written response question with every text and in every session. Comprehension with level reader I use these question stems to develop questions based on the text. Grab the question stems HERE! Completed written response, kiddos write in their composition journal Comprehension with text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Here I use a reading passage with several comprehension tasks for a 2nd grade kiddo. Find these reading passage + comprehension packets HERE! Phonics After the reading and comprehension tasks are complete, I work on some phonics task with my kiddos. One of my favorite tasks is doing a word family word splash. I select a word from our text. I like how this tasks shows kiddos that if they can spell a work like bat, they can also spell cat, mat, sat, etc. Writing short sentences with words from the Word Family Splash Word building and sounding out Extras I like to use phonics poems as an additional fluency tool. The kiddos glue them into their composition notebook so they can go back and re-read between sessions, continuing to build fluency with familiar texts. These phonics poems are from Susan Jones. I use our Literacy Bags in between reading tasks. Literacy Bags break up the rigorous reading and fluency practice we do for much of the session. You can find Literacy Bags HERE! I'm working with a few Kindergartners who need sight word practice. I use the K version of our Differentiated Reading Fluency passages. In K, the passages start as reading letters, then sight words fluently. It perfect support for my K kiddos! You can grab these HERE! Additionally, our Print a Standard packs have been a great support for targeting specific skills students need to work on. Each pack contains tasks for one standard and has several activities for that standard, so there are a lot of opportunities to help the student learn, practice, and master standards based skills. You can grab Print a Standard packs for ELA AND MATH HERE! Connecting with students and parents on a more personal level is the best part of tutoring. I love giving kiddos instant feedback and celebrating their successes! I also love that I can give them more choices to foster a love of reading. In the picture above, I'm showing several text selections. The kiddos I'm working with is able to choose the book he'll read with me for the session. I also love being able to help parents foster learning at home. I've found most all of my parents did not really know about their kiddo's reading level or reading abilities. This makes it difficult for parents to find the best "just right" books for reading at home. After I work with a kiddo, I leave the text piece we worked on for that session (a passage or a book) so the kiddo can re-read it with parents. I leave their composition notebooks with phonics poems for the kiddos to go back a re-read. I also leave the fluency sentence strips for practice between sessions.
Hello again! It's been a busy blogging summer so far. I'm on a roll this week! Since most of us are not teaching in classrooms right now, I...
If you are like me, you have gone down the rabbit hole of searching for resources, ideas, and strategies to bring the science of reading and structured literacy into the classroom. Your eyes are glazed over and you have some great ideas... but just don't know where (or how) to start. Here are some simple tips that can help you get going on your science of reading journey in your classroom of older students. Tip #5 is my favourite!
Starting a tutoring business? Learn how to plan and stay organized as a tutor with a tutoring binder. Everything to need to get started...
Do you like to teach? Do you want to or need to make more money? Consider starting a tutoring side hustle. Here's 5 steps to start a tutoring side hustle.
Dyslexia reading programs, dyslexia strategies, dyslexia tips, dyslexia tutor, Orton Gillingham, Lindamood Bell, Barton, Wilson, multisensory program..
After-school tutoring can be a great way to use your teaching skills and strategies to reach students on a different level while earning a l...
Don't have time in your day to reach every student? My 10 Minute Reading Intervention resource can help you squeeze in lessons that are fast & effective!
The Best Reading Manipulatives For Every Classroom - 15 of the best reading manipulatives for your classroom. These manipulatives for reading help reinforce literacy skills and make learning fun.
These Proofreading and Editing Reading Passages are a fun way to practice reading comprehension and proofreading at the same time.This product includes 4 non-fiction reading passages for students to proofread and edit. Each worksheet comes with an editing chart. Also included are 4 Answer Keys so that students may check their work independently, Comprehension Questions ... Read More about Proofreading and Editing Reading Comprehension Passages
Perfect for kids in kindergarten through middle school, these reading comprehension strategies and activities for struggling readers will not disappoint!
Whether you're a homeschool mom looking for a great book for your 5th grader or a classroom teacher trying to build a great library, finding texts that are engaging and a great fit for your readers can be tough. I've compiled this list of the best books for 5th graders to help save you time and give you a
Are you looking for ways to have classroom parent volunteers? Here is a list of 50 ideas to use parent volunteers int the classroom. #parentvolunteers #classroommanagement
Intervention in reading can be the difference that changes a student's path. What teacher doesn’t want to be that difference? But, finding...
Discover my favorite activities that are aligned with the science of reading curriculum to help your young learns master reading fast.
Check out how using Reader's Theater in the classroom is a big hit with primary students. Also, find easy-prep resources for on-the-go teaching!
Do you have struggling readers you just can't reach? This mega list of reading intervention activities will help you teach all students how to read!
Access a set of 6 free Science of Reading Downloads. Decodable word posters, phoneme-grapheme mapping mats, and more.
Hands-on pre-reading activities that encourage your elementary students to access their prior knowledge and make predictions.
Finding out what a student knows about phonics is made easy with this quick and simple phonics assessment for K-3 readers! And it's FREE.
Dive into the world of literacy centers and unleash their full potential with insights from the science of reading!
Adding some fun games for reading in the classroom schedule will instantly get your kids excited to read! These 5 fun reading games are...
Do you think reading centers are only for the littles? Think again! Learn why you should be using upper elementary reading centers.
Storyline Online is one of the best sites for viewing children's book read alouds. Let me share some details you might not know yet, and I'll throw in a helpful Freebie you'll use again and again. If you've looked on YouTube for kids books being read aloud you've found thousands of them. Any given children's book title usually has several different uploaded read aloud videos to choose from and there is a wide range in quality. I found Storyline Online this very way, while looking through all the YouTube videos for read alouds. Storyline Online is made possible by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation, SAG-AFTRA. It is absolutely free to use. As I write this they have over fifty children's picture book read aloud videos available. Here's a sample. Each video starts with the actor, or actors, holding the book and giving a book introduction before beginning to read. The camera zooms in on the illustrations, where often little parts of the pictures become animated. Throughout the story you go back and forth between seeing the illustrations and the actor reading the book, so kids never forget they are being read to. Fully animated video movies of children's books are great, to be sure, but it is easy to forget those cartoons come from books. I think when kids watch books being read by live people there is added value and emphasis on reading. Because I had always viewed the Storyline Online videos directly on YouTube, I didn't realize that there are activity guides written for each story, which you can only get on the Storyline Online site. The activity guides, written for teachers mostly, but some with activity guides specifically for parents, are chockfull of ideas– some suggest before, during and after the story discussion points, themes, writing ideas, art, movement, even cooking activities... all sorts of things to choose from. You can find them by going directly to StorylineOnline.net under the All Books tab. You can watch the Storyline Online read aloud videos on YouTube, but when watching on YouTube it is pretty easy to get to other videos and ads, some of which you wouldn't want your kids to view. You can also watch Storyline Online videos directly on StorylineOnline.net, with options of watching via YouTube or SchoolTube, with SchoolTube being the safer option. Either way you choose to watch on the Storyline Online site, when you get to the end of the video, other Storyline Online videos will pop up. That isn't a bad thing, unless you want kids to only watch one particular story, or you want other kids to use the same device and watch that one particular story. So to keep kids on the correct story I created QR codes for the stories through Safe YouTube. Click to download Safe YouTube QR Code cards for Storyline Online videos Safe YouTube is better than safe mode on YouTube, and it takes away all those many buttons and videos that cause distractions and allow kids to click and end up anywhere on YouTube. No online connection is completely safe and kids seem to find a way to other things no matter what, so always keep an eye on what they are watching. I created one for each story on Storyline Online, currently fifty three in total. You can print out the QR Code cards in color, or they come out crisp and clean if you choose to print in black and white. Laminate, cut apart, and you'll have a set of cards for kids to use on any device with a QR Code reader. It will take them to that story and no other. These work great in classrooms as centers, Daily 5 and Readers Workshop stations, and independent reading choices. If you're a parent you'll find them useful at home or on the road with devices. To get this Freebie just click on the picture of QR code cards above. There are six pages in all. I will update as I see new stories appear on Storyline Online. Be sure to Pin this post so you can get to updated pages. I suggest you cruise by StorylineOnline.net to see the full list of read aloud titles. I found many good books there, books I hadn't heard of before. I like to have actual copies of the books the kids are going to listen to, and I like to read the book to my students first, so I can make the most out of that read aloud– focusing on vocabulary, story problem, characters, etc. But if I'm low on cash, Storyline Online is a way to let my kidpeople hear quality books at no cost to me. Many of my favorite Flashlight Press books are there, too, and if you are a regular reader you know how I love Flashlight Press. (News Flash– I'll be giving away another Flashlight Book soon!!) Storyline Online has won lots of awards and that is for very good reason. Good book selections, VERY well read! Hope you found this post about Storyline Online and the activity guides helpful. And I hope you'll download the QR Code cards and find them useful with your kids. I am not being paid or getting any perk for telling you about Storyline Online. I just wanted to share a great resource. See you next time!
Teaching Beginner Level FSL Students to Read with Phonics Bonjour, chers professeurs de français! As educators, one of our primary goals is to empower our students to become confident readers. For beginner-level students of French as a Second Language (FSL), phonics can be a powerful tool to unlock the world of reading. Phonics involves teaching the relationship between sounds and letters, enabling learners to decode and read words with accuracy and fluency. In this blog post, we will explore effective strategies and activities to incorporate phonics instruction into your FSL classrooms, ensuring that your students develop a strong foundation in reading from the very beginning. 1. Start with the Basics: Begin by introducing the French alphabet and its unique sounds. Emphasize the differences between the French and English alphabets, as well as any special characters (e.g., é, è, ê) that represent distinct sounds. Utilize visuals, flashcards, and interactive activities to make the learning process engaging and memorable. Check out these FREE alphabet cards by Ashley Ramos with pronunciation guide to get you started. 2. Teach Letter-Sound Correspondence: To introduce phonics, associate each letter with its corresponding sound. Focus on the most common sounds first, such as 'a,' 'e,' 'i,' 'o,' and 'u.' Use clear pronunciation examples and repetitive exercises to help students master these foundational sounds. Gradually introduce consonants and less common vowels as they progress. 3. Introduce Phonemic Awareness: Before diving into phonics, build phonemic awareness skills, which involve recognizing and manipulating individual sounds in spoken words. Conduct activities that require students to identify initial, medial, and final sounds in words. This step lays the groundwork for phonics as students understand how sounds come together to form words. 4. Syllables and Blending: Break down French words into syllables, and teach students how to blend these syllables together to read the whole word. Encourage students to clap out the syllables and then blend them to enhance their phonemic abilities. Gradually increase the complexity of words as their confidence grows. French Immersion avec Mme Sophie has generously offered up this free deck of BOOM cards for practicing syllables in French. 5. Cognates and High-Frequency Words: Leverage the power of cognates, which are words in French that share a similar spelling and meaning with English words. Introduce high-frequency words, like "je," "le," "la," "et," etc., that frequently appear in texts. These familiar words create a sense of accomplishment and motivation for beginner learners. Use this full powerpoint lesson plan, word wall and activities to teach your students about French-English cognates. 6. Engage with Phonics Activities: Make learning enjoyable through various phonics activities. Use interactive games, puzzles, and online resources that target specific phonics skills. Create word-building exercises using letter cards or magnetic letters, where students can manipulate letters to form words. Check out this comprehensive set of 26 French phonics brochures filled with activities for the whole year. French phonics activities 7. Read Aloud and Shared Reading: Regularly read aloud to your students, exposing them to the rhythms and intonations of the French language. Incorporate shared reading activities where students follow along with you, highlighting the words as you read. This helps students understand the connection between spoken and written language. If you’re having trouble accessing French books in your area, or would like a digital version, please check out The French Experiment’s website for access to FREE read-alouds that even come with audio! French phonics activity brochures for the whole year 8. Decodable Books: Use decodable books specifically designed for beginner learners. These books contain words with phonetically regular patterns, allowing students to practice their phonics skills in context. Gradually increase the complexity of the texts as students gain proficiency. Check out the Science of Reading in French’s TPT shop for decodable reading in French activities. As French teachers, teaching beginner-level FSL students to read using phonics lays a strong foundation for their language learning journey. By systematically introducing letter-sound correspondences, blending, and phonemic awareness, students can decode words with confidence and embark on a fulfilling reading experience. Remember to make learning engaging and enjoyable through interactive activities, read-aloud sessions, and the use of decodable books. With your guidance and support, your FSL students will soon become proficient readers, opening up a world of possibilities through language! Bon courage!
Are you challenging gifted students in the classroom? Check out these daily challenge tasks that will help your gifted students thrive!
Invite students to color-code important keywords and phrases. If the class is reading about recycling, ask them to use green or blue highlighters to find key vocabulary or commonly repeated phrases that will stick in their brain. If the students are reading about Ancient Greece, offer different colors for different nouns—one color for important people, one color for important places, another color for key things.
These ideas give active reading a whole new meaning.
Mastering basic division facts is such an important skill for 3rd and 4th grade students. Making it FUN is just as important. As a former 4th grade
Finding chapter books for kids to read that they have a high interest in is key. Listed here are some of our favorite chapter book series for kids in 4th and 5th grades. Most of these are ones that I either read as a kid or used as a reading tutor. Note that while these ... Read More about Favorite Chapter Books for Kids in 4th and 5th Grades
This post will share the most frequent questions asked about the reading intervention program. Free downloads included for reading and grade level correlation.
Reading interest and attitude surveys provide valuable information about students. Read on to find out more and see examples to use with students.
Teaching theme is not an easy task! Not only do students need to have a strong comprehension of the story's elements (like plot, setting, and characters), but they also have to be able to make inferences to find the author's message, since most themes are not overtly stated by the author. So, what are some of my favorite activities for helping kids understand theme? I'll list a number of them here. 1. Make an Anchor Chart Anchor charts are a great way to make learning visual and to have a record that kids can refer to when they need a bit of extra support. Theme may be defined in a number of ways. To me, the theme is the author's message or what he/she wants the reader to take away/learn from the story. It is a BIG idea, with a real-world or universal concern and can be applied to anyone. Besides talking about what a theme is, you'll also want to go over what it isn't. For example, some kids confuse the main idea of the story with its theme. To help students understand the difference, it's helpful to use stories that everyone in the class knows, like previous read alouds or classic stories like The Three Little Pigs. You can take each story and discuss the main idea (what the story was mostly about - specific to the story) vs. the theme (the lesson the author wants the reader to know - not specific to the story), to contrast the two ideas. The second area of confusion for some kids is that the theme is not specific to the characters in the story. In the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes, for example. The theme would not be that...A little mouse named Chrysanthemum learned to accept the uniqueness of her name. The theme would be larger than the book and would be something like...It's important to accept oneself. Also, you'll want to explain to your students that often times, a book has multiple themes and there are several answers which work equally well to describe a book's theme. Since theme is very subjective, I tell students that I will accept any answer, as long as they have the text evidence to prove it. For example, in the book, Wonder, by R.J. Palacio, one might argue that the theme is about friendship, another might say family, or even courage, or kindness. Any one of these themes would be right, and counted as such, since they each fit the story and could be supported by text evidence. 2. Use Pixar Shorts to Practice Theme Besides the sheer enjoyment which comes from watching these mini-films, your students can learn a lot about reading concepts from these. They're great for ELL students or for struggling readers, and for all readers really since the text complexity piece is removed. You can find these clips on YouTube, but you'll want to make sure to preview them first, so you're more familiar with the plot and are able to focus on theme questions. Here are some of my favorite Pixar Shorts for teaching theme: Piper Partly Cloudy Lava Boundin' 3. Use Mentor Texts Mentor texts are one of my go-to teaching tools as picture books are able to portray examples of just about any reading concept you need to teach. One thing I like to do when using mentor texts for theme, is to vary the types of questions I ask. Rather than always saying What is the theme?, I might ask... What is the deeper meaning of this story? After reading this book, what do you think matters to this author? Which idea from the story do you think might stay with you? What did the author want people to learn from this story?... Once kids answer, you might say, Ah...so that's the theme! Some of my current mentor text favorites for theme include the following: Ish by Peter H. Reynolds I Wish I Were a Butterfly by James Howe Journey by Aaron Becker (a wordless book) Beautiful Oops by Barry Saltzberg The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires Spoon by Amy Krouse Rosenthal Pete and Pickles by Berkeley Breathed If you're looking for more titles, I have a FREE Mentor Text List for Literature which includes a page on theme which you can download from my TpT store. 4. Use Posters with Themes to Chart Book Themes I like to choose 8 - 10 common themes and place posters of them in the classroom. These are included in my Theme unit but you could easily make them yourself if you'd like. After we finish a class novel, a read aloud, or a mentor text as part of a mini-lesson, I like to have the kids discuss the theme of the book. Once we decide on the theme, I place a miniaturized copy of the book's cover (about 3 x 3 inches or so) under the correct theme poster. You can also make the posters more interactive by allowing kids to write titles of books they have recently read on sticky notes, under the posters as well. 5. Use Songs to Practice Finding the Theme I love to add music to the classroom whenever possible. Not only does it add instant motivation for some kids, but it is also just good for them in so many ways. There are lots of songs you can use to teach theme, from current pop songs to oldies, rap songs, and country songs. While all of these work well, I especially enjoy using Disney songs. Disney songs are easily recognized for some kids, have catchy, fun tunes, and have lyrics that need no censoring (yay!). You can easily find the lyrics online to project on a smartboard or document projector, and the song clips may be found on YouTube, Here are some of my favorite Disney songs which work well for theme: Hakuna Matata from Lion King Just Keep Swimming from Finding Dory Reflection from Mulan Let it Go from Frozen Something There from Beauty and the Beast A Whole New World from Aladdin 6. Introduce Short Texts Using Task Cards Using task cards for theme gives your students a great deal of practice in a short period of time, which makes them a perfect way to begin to practice finding the theme using text. I love the fact that students can read multiple task card stories and practice finding the theme 20 - 30 times, in the time it might take to read a story and find the theme once. You can do task cards as a center activity, to play Scoot, or as a whole class scavenger hunt. One thing I like to do for the scavenger hunt is to make sure everyone has a partner and to pair stronger readers with struggling readers. 7. Add Some Writing After students have worked on theme for a week or two, I like to have students create their own short stories which show a strong theme, without directly stating it. This changes each student's role from a theme finder, to a theme creator and gives students insight into how authors create a situation that allows a theme to unfold. When I introduce this project, we refer back to the task cards we just completed, as an example of story length and rich content. In a matter of 2 - 3 paragraphs, students learn that they can include enough information to let our readers know our message. After students are finished creating these short stories, it's fun to share them in some way, to give more theme practice. Sometimes I have students meet in small groups to share out, with group members guessing the theme. Other years, I leave a stack on my desk and grab several if we have a few minutes. Either the students or I read the short story out loud, and the class discusses the theme. 8. Move to Passages, Short Stories, and Novels. Once we have scaffolded a great foundation for the understanding of theme, there comes a point where kids have to move on to text which is more challenging. I like to use page-long passages which I have created, before using short stories, and ultimately novels. If you're looking for some ready made materials to help you teach theme, here's a packet I love to use which works well for 4th and 5th Graders. Click here to read more about the Theme unit. Want some more teaching ideas and activities to teach theme? Click here to read Teaching Themes in Literature. If you like this post, make sure to share it with a teacher friend! Thanks so much for stopping by! For more ideas and strategies focused on upper elementary, be sure to sign up for The Teacher Next Door's free email newsletter! Bonus, you'll also gain access to my FREE Resource Library which contains exclusive upper elementary freebies that you won't find anywhere else! I'd love to connect with you! The Teacher Next Door's Website Pinterest Facebook Instagram TpT Store
