Table of Contents

Introduction

This guide will help you tutor a teenager who wants to improve his reading and writing skills. It was written to be used with high school students. However many of the ideas in this guide can be used with a younger student or a teenager who is not in school.

Getting Started

Student Centred Individualized Learning (SCIL)

What are your student’s strengths?
What does your student do well? What are his interests and skills?

What are your student’s goals?
What does your student want to do? What would he like to learn?

What are your student’s learning needs?

What does your student need to learn in order to reach his goals?

Using a Student-Centred Approach to Tutoring

You and your student will create your own learning materials.
Ask your student: “What would you like to do?” “What would you like to work on next?” “How can I help you?” Rather than relying on a ready-made curriculum, you will create materials that are based on the strengths and needs of your student.

Your student decides what you will do together.
Ask your student: “Is this useful to you?” “Is there something else we should be doing?” If your student dislikes crossword puzzles, then do not do them!

Build on your student’s strengths and confidence.

Start with what your student can do and what your student knows. Set up your student for success. Praise your student.

It’s about Relationships
Only when you have a relationship built on mutual respect and trust will your student take risks in front of you. Help your student understand that making mistakes is an important part of learning.

Evaluation based on Improvement
Show your student how he has made progress during your time together by focussing on his accomplishments and the ways he has improved rather than comparing him to others or using standard tests.

Learning Styles
Everyone learns differently. Your student may learn by doing, or by observation. He may need a lot of activity or he may need a quiet space to learn. Be flexible and vary your tutoring by using a variety of activities.

Voluntary Participation
It is important that your student meet with you on a voluntary basis. One-on-one tutoring works best when both the tutor and student choose to be there.

Your Role

Be a literacy tutor.
Homework should be used as a tool to help your student develop his literacy skills. Your role is to help learning take place by helping your student develop the skills to do his own homework and other activities that involve reading and writing.

Be clear about your role.
You are a literacy tutor first and foremost. Overtime, you may become your student’s advocate or part of his support network but especially in the beginning it is important that you focus on your student’s learning.

Be committed.
Stick with it. Be on time. Let your student know if you are unable to meet.

Be prepared.
Come prepared with something to do each session. Following a student centred approach puts your student in control of his own learning, however it is the responsibility of both of you to bring in materials and activities to work on.

Be a mentor.
You are a role model for your student. Listen to your student. Allow time for conversation. Demonstrate a positive attitude towards books and learning.

Be a facilitator and motivator in your student’s learning.

You are a resource to help your student achieve personal learning goals. Even the most eager students have periods where they have difficulty concentrating and getting excited about learning. For other students, motivation is an on-going issue.

Open the world of reading to your student.
Your role is also to help your student discover new interests and possibilities. Bring poetry, magazines and good books which may spark your student’s interest.

Assessment and Evaluation

Why Assess and Evaluate?

The purpose of assessing your student’s strengths and needs is to help you decide how to best help your student. The purpose of evaluating your student is to provide encouragement to your student by showing him the progress he has made.

Using standardized tests may help you understand some of the learning needs of your student, however they are not helpful in many ways. There are many reasons why students do not do well on standardized tests. It could be that your student simply does not do well on tests or he could have difficulty understanding test questions. Especially if your student is in school, he is already being tested in a number of ways. Your role as a tutor is not to test your student but to figure out the best way of helping him and to provide encouragement by showing how he has progressed. We recommend that you use informal methods of assessing your student’s learning needs and measuring his progress.

Where to Start?

When you first meet with your student ask him:

• What would you like to work on?
• What do you want to learn about?
• What are you interested in?
• What would you like to get out of this tutoring?

This discussion will also help you decide what materials to bring to tutoring sessions (books or magazines) and what to encourage your student to bring to tutoring sessions (textbooks, homework).

If your student would like you to help him read, write or spell better, ask him to:

• write a few lines about anything.
• read a paragraph out loud.

Make sure your student knows that you are not testing him but you are trying to figure out how best to help. Respond to his reading or writing by pointing out some strengths and by identifying areas where you might be able to work together.

Keeping on Track

Check in regularly with your student to make sure that your tutoring is on track. Ask your student:

• Are you finding our time together useful?
• Are there other things we should be doing?

Look at some of the things you have done together and focus on improvements and places to focus on. Ask your student:

• What has worked? What hasn’t? What should we be working on?
• How do you think you have benefited us meeting together?

Reviewing activities may cause you and your student to re-think what you work on or how you work together. Be creative when problems arise.

Demonstrating Progress

Provide your student with encouragement by showing him how he has improved.

• Compare initial writing samples with more recent samples.
• Ask your student to comment on any improvements that he has noticed.
• Look at tests, assignments to see improvements.
• Talk about your observations about any improvements you have noticed.

Remember: It takes time to reach goals. Help your student to view goals in manageable chunks.

Keeping Track of Your Student’s Progress

Maintain a journal and portfolio so you can both see where progress has been made and what still needs to be worked on. Discuss with your student why you would like to keep a journal or portfolio when you first meet with him.

Portfolio

Compile a portfolio of activities with your student. Remember to date everything. Things that can be included in your portfolio:

• brainstorms and outlines for assignments.
• first drafts and final copies of assignments, homework or writing samples.
• list of books read and dates read.
• any crossword puzzles and word games.
• photocopies of articles, passages and other documents you have read together.
• copies of tests or exams from school.

Student’s Journal

Keep a journal with your student that describes the activities that you and your student do together. You and your student can share the responsibility for writing in the journal right from the beginning. Your student may ask you to write in the journal initially and he may write in it over time. Make notes in your journal about:

• what you did during the session.
• the most enjoyable activity you did during the session.
• what you would like to work on the next time you meet.

Tutor’s Journal

Keep a weekly private journal with notes of your observations on:

• the ease in which your student reads passages aloud or reads silently.
• your student’s feelings towards school and the tutoring sessions.
• your student’s punctuality, attendance, materials brought to session.

(You may prefer to note this information directly into your student’s journal so that your student is involved in all aspects of the process however you may find a private journal a useful tool.)

Session Planning

The extent to which you need to plan your sessions will become apparent as you work with your student. Especially if your student is in school, he may have some very definite ideas about what he would like to do. Conversely your student may ask you to plan what you do together. Whatever the case, it is important for you to provide some structure to the session.

• Choose a place to tutor that is comfortable for both of you. Avoid places that are distracting or inappropriate.
• Talk at the beginning of each session about what you will be working on that day. Together, draw up an action plan for the session.
• Vary activities. Work part of the time on homework or the computer, and try to read and write something every session.
• Be prepared but remain flexible. Always bring something to work on even if your student is eager and always seems to bring something to do.
• Make sure to have time to talk and listen to your student. Discussing what has been read helps with understanding and developing critical thinking skills.
• Talk about what you will do together the next time you meet at the end of each session. This will help both of you prepare.

LEARNING TO READ – An Overview

Definition: Reading is the decoding of written symbols into meaningful ideas.

The tutoring ideas in this section will help you teach a beginning reader learn how to read. Learning how to read involves learning about:

• the relationships between sounds and letters
• blending sounds to form words
• the patterns and connections between words
• using context as an aid in word recognition

In the ‘learning to read’ stage, a beginning reader must be “glued” to the print. Every word and every letter becomes important as he learns the mechanics of reading.

The best way to determine if your student is a beginning reader is to simply ask him or listen to him read. Many of the ideas in this section will be helpful to you if your student tells you that he has a lot of trouble reading and spelling or if he is unable to read most words with any degree of ease.

Some students can read a number of words by sight and therefore can read familiar texts with ease. However, these students have a lot of difficulty reading new and unfamiliar words. Ask your student to read some new big words to determine if your student is essentially a ‘sight word’ reader. If your student is unable to ‘figure out’ these words, then the ideas in this section will be helpful to you.

The ideas that you rely upon will become evident as you work with your student and learn about his strengths and needs. Experience provide the best guidance for deciding what works best with your student.

Sight Words and Word Banks

Help your student learn to read some key words by sight. Help him compile a bank of sight words.

Why Focus on Sight Words?

Sight words are words that we are able to read instantly, without sounding them out letter by letter or syllable by syllable. There are many words that we learn to read by sight. Many sight words are non-phonetic (can’t be sounded out) and therefore must be recognized as a whole e.g. through, thought, though, cough. Other sight words occur frequently and need to be recognized automatically for fluent reading e.g. of, it, he, I, the. Other sight words are of high interest to the reader. Your personal student’s sight words may include basketball and soccer terms or words that he uses at work like menu, washrooms and hamburger.

Your student may wish to learn these words by:

• writing them on flash cards (an accompanying picture can be helpful) creating a crossword puzzle or word search.
• completing cloze exercises.
• playing word games with you (i.e. jumble, concentration or hangman)

Phonics

Help your student learn the sounds associated with various letters and letter groups.

Why Use Phonics?

The aim of phonics is to help beginning readers learn letter/sound relationships so they can decode (or sound out) words by the way they are spelled. Phonics is one of the cues that people use when reading. Reading also depends upon connections between spellings, speech, sounds and meanings. Use the ideas in this section when you read and write with your student as letter/sound relationships are best learned during meaningful reading. Avoid nonsense exercises or repetitive drilling.

1. Hearing Sounds in Words
   Your student must be able to hear the various sounds within words to be able to learn letter/sound relationships. To help your student develop and strengthen this ability, ask your student to listen for a particular sound while you are reading together or to identify words with a particular sound while silently reading. Ask your student to identify all the words with a ‘ssss’ sound while silently reading a passage or a group of words.
2. Initial Consonants

   Help your student learn the sounds of consonants by first focusing on initial consonants. These consonants usually sound the same at the beginning of words.

   bad date fun hand joke
   key man name pen queen

   radio tape van wet zipper

   But c and g can have two different sounds:

   cat or city      gas or gem

   There are eight pairs of consonants that represent one sound:

   phone    shoe    wheel
      this or thumb    chair, choir or chute

3. Rhyming Word Families
   When you read with your student, look for opportunities to show your student the relationship between words in word families. e.g. book, look, took, mistook. Understanding how word families are built will help your student learn about vowels. As your student gains confidence and knowledge about word-families, draw your student’s attention to words that have the same sound but are spelled differently. e.g. Spain, rain, plain versus lane, plane, Dane
4. Sounding It Out
   Help your student learn how to ‘sound out’ words by breaking long words into syllables. You may need to divide the word into syllables for your student by clapping or tapping on the table. e.g. phar/ma/cy and de/ve/lop
5. Demonstrate Phonetic Rules

   Help your student learn about vowels by pointing out words that demonstrate how the rules work. e.g. mat versus mate: the final e in mate changes the vowel sound from mat. Discuss exceptions to the rules with more advanced students. e.g. When two vowels go walking, the first vowel does the talking. i.e. boat, beat. However this well-known rule only works 45% of the time e.g. chief, riot.

6. Games, Tongue Twisters. Poems, Songs
   Play word games with your student based on word families. Read poems, song lyrics, or try to stump one another with tongue twisters. Meaningful repetition is the best way to learn about the ‘exceptions to the rules.’

Word Structure Analysis

Help your student learn how to break down words into manageable pieces.

Why Use Word Structure Analysis?

Whereas readers use phonics to ‘build a word’ by analyzing the sounds of letters, readers also break down words into smaller parts in order to read the word.

1. Help your student learn about compound words and root words.
      compound words: newspaper, lawnmower
      root words: read misread, reread, reader, reading
2. Help your student find familiar words in new big words.
      continent: con tin
3. Help your student learn about prefixes.

      mis -> misinform
      re -> redo, remove

4. Help your student learn about suffixes.
      able ->learnable
      tion ->participation
      er -> teacher
      ing -> playing
5. Help your student learn how to make words plural.
      es makes words ending with s, ss, ch, sh, and x plural.

      s makes most other words plural with a few exceptions.
   Some exceptions:
      foot -> feet
      moose -> moose
      child -> children
      fish -> fish or fishes

6. Help your student learn about contractions. (i.e. the shortened form of a word or phrase)

      is not -> isn’t
      they are ->they’re
      will not -> won’t
      he will -> he’ll

Helping with Spelling

Help your student become a successful speller.

Why Focus on Spelling?

Spelling, writing and learning how to read are interconnected. Spelling helps students learn letter/sound relationships and writing helps to reinforce spelling. Encourage your student to take risks and view errors as a natural part of learning how to spell. Spelling is best learned while reading and writing rather than through spelling lists and drills.

Help your student practise:

• breaking words into syllables in order to make a large word more manageable. Divide words into syllables by tapping on the desk or clapping. Remember, every syllable has a vowel sound.
• sounding out the words by slowly pronouncing the word and writing down the letters they hear. Encourage your student to try to spell the word, generate several choices and choose the best one.
• thinking of words that rhyme with the word to be spelled.
• breaking down big words into manageable pieces by looking for prefixes and suffixes or smaller words.

When your student spells:

Look for patterns of errors. Your student may always have difficulties with certain words. For example, many students have difficulty with the homonyms your/you’re and there/their/they’re.

Encourage Self-Correction. Before pointing out errors, ask your student to identify the words that he feels may be spelled incorrectly.

Share your Personal Spelling Strategies. Some people use mnemonic devices such as ‘the principal is our pal’ or mispronounce words on purpose such as knife.

Spelling involves a lot of memory. Remind your student that spelling can seem complicated and involves a lot of practice and memory.

Language Experience Approach

Write down the words of your student as he orally composes a story, poem or talks about a personal experience. You are essentially acting as a scribe for your student. Use this reading material to help your student learn to read.

Why Use the Language Experience Approach?

It can be overwhelming for a student to simultaneously learn the meaning of new words and work on decoding words. This approach creates reading material that your student will understand completely. It is made of your student’s language and also your student’s experience therefore all of his energy can be focused on learning how to read.

When Using the Language Experience Approach

Brainstorm some ideas with your student before writing.

• Write down all of your student’s words.
• Write clearly. Printing is best for many students.
• Anything goes! Your student may wish to compose a letter, a journal entry or a poem.
• Read it aloud to your student to make sure he agrees with what you have written.
• Date each piece of writing.
• Keep each ‘language experience’ in your portfolio for future use.

Learning Activities

Immediately after you finish writing down your student’s words:

• Respond in a positive way about the message of the text.
• Ask your student to read it back to you. He should be fairly successful unless it is very long.
• Your student may wish to edit it as he reads.
• Your student may like to copy it in his own hand writing.

In a few weeks, your student may have some difficulty reading this piece of writing which gives you the opportunity to help him develop some decoding skills.

Reading Aloud with Your Student

Read aloud with your student so he can practise reading.

Why Read Aloud with Your Student?

Reading aloud with a beginning reader is the most effective way to help him learn how to read. When you read aloud with your student, you help him practise reading familiar words and figuring out new ones. You help your student learn words that need to be learned by sight.

Before Reading

• Choose short predictable reading materials that are relevant to your student but are not too lengthy or complicated. Use a passage that will be of personal interest or use a text that you and your student created through the language experience approach.
• Look through the text and pick out the words that may not be familiar to your student. Read these words aloud with your student and discuss their meanings.

While Reading

• Give your student positive feedback whenever you read together.
• Encourage your student to ask questions as you read together.
• Stop reading if your student’s interest wanes.

There are many ways a passage, article or story can be read.

• Read the passage aloud to your student.
• Encourage your student to read aloud to you.
• Take turns reading. Read to each other page by page or paragraph by paragraph.
• Read a passage aloud together. Your student may read every word with you or interject words.
• Read a sentence aloud from a passage to your student. Your student then reads the same sentence. Continue through the entire passage in this manner. You and your student can also read a passage phrase by phrase or word by word.
• Tape yourselves reading.

After Reading

Reading and Writing Ideas

Cloze Exercises

Delete specific words or parts of words from a text then ask your student to fill in the blanks. Cloze exercises are essentially fill in the blank exercises.

Why Use Cloze Exercises?

Completing cloze exercises helps your student focus on specific difficulties he may be having. You may notice certain patterns in mistakes your student makes when he reads such as overlooking word endings.

When Designing and Using Cloze Exercises

• Use passages that your student is personally interested in such as one of his journal entries, a language experience story or his favourite song.
• Design exercises for one specific purpose by focusing on one difficulty your student may be having.
• Cloze exercises are regularly used by teachers and in some cases have been overused. Make sure your student wants to complete cloze exercises.

Some Variations on Cloze Exercises

To help your student focus on using context clues to predict the meaning of an unfamiliar word.
Delete key vocabulary words in a passage. Either list the deleted words below the passage or ask your student to think of words that keep the meaning of the passage.

To help your student learn about consonant sounds:

• Remove initial consonants from a number of words in a passage.

To help your student focus on suffixes (word endings):

• Remove all the suffixes in a passage.

To help your student focus on spelling:

• Delete all the letters except the initial letter in a number of key words in a passage.

READING TO LEARN – An Overview

Definition: Reading is the decoding of written symbols into meaningful ideas.

The ability to decode words is basic to the reading process however reading is much more than just breaking words down into smaller parts and ‘sounding them out.’ Reading without meaning is meaningless. To be able to read, people need to be able to recognize words and understand the meaning of what they have read.

The issue for many teenagers is not the mechanics of reading but one of comprehension. They are able to read most words with ease but have difficulty understanding or thinking critically about what they have read. They can be considered ‘word bound’ as they focus all energy on decoding individual words and not on the meaning of what they are reading. These teenagers are not beginning readers, however they are not successful readers.

In helping your student became a successful reader, your role is more of a facilitator that a teacher. Your job is to help your student become “unglued” from the print and become a fluent reader so that all his energy can be focussed on thinking and reading.

The ideas described in this section will help your student develop the strategies that successful readers and writers use. When you are working with your student, look for opportunities where your student can practise these strategies or you may simply discuss them and encourage your student to use them.

Strategies of Successful Readers

Help your student learn and practise the strategies that successful readers use.

Before Reading

Using Prediction

Successful readers look at a number of clues to predict the contents of a book, magazine, newspaper, etc. These clues put the materials into a context for the reader which helps with understanding.

Before you read with your student, ask your student to predict:

• the main gist of a novel by looking at the front and back covers, first paragraph, inside flap.
• the content in a non-fiction book by looking at the table of contents, title, key chapters, index.
• the information of a newspaper article using the ‘headline,’ caption and photograph
• the bias of a particular article based on the magazine or newspaper it was printed in.

Build on Your Student’s Prior Knowledge

Successful readers have a broad base of background knowledge that they use to understand new information and ideas. Prior knowledge is one of the greatest contributors to understanding.

Before reading a book, article or textbook, ask your student to:

• Ask your student to tell you what he knows about the subject.
• Then build upon your student’s prior knowledge in terms of the concepts and language in the text.
• Help your student understand new concepts by relating them to concepts that are familiar to him.

While Reading

Watch and Listen to Your Student

Your student’s facial expressions and voice intonation are your first clues. Stop and discuss the sentence or paragraph when your student looks confused or incorrectly places emphasis on words which obscures the meaning of the phrase.

Use Context to Predict Meaning

Successful readers infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word or phrase based on the context of the word in a passage. When your student is unsure of the meaning of a word, ask him to predict the meaning from the context of the paragraph or sentence.

Ask Questions and Discuss the Text

Encourage your student to ask questions as you read together. Discuss the roles of various characters in a novel, the concepts in a textbook or the meaning of new words. As you read through a narrative text, take turns asking each other what will happen next in the story and why.

Talk Aloud Your Thinking Process

When reading with your student, explain your thinking process as you make sense of the text. Show how you constantly check that the text makes sense by pausing, re-reading sentences and referring to earlier information. Encourage your student to think aloud as well.

Read Silently

Your student may feel uncomfortable or be reluctant to read aloud with you. He may find it difficult to focus attention on the meaning as he reads aloud as he is concentrating all energy on pronouncing the words correctly. Read the text silently with your student and then discuss what you read.

Enjoy Reading Together!

Talk about the pictures and make humorous comments. Give your student positive feedback as you read. If your student loses interest in the story, move on. Maintain the flow of the reading by helping with difficult words. Use your voice to emphasize key words and ideas. Read dramatically!

Reading for Speed or Specific Information

Discuss with your student the strategies you use when you read to search for specific information in newspapers, magazines and reference books. Look for opportunities where your student can practise these strategies.

• Skim through a newspaper article with your student to look for general information, then read the article word for word to confirm your prediction.
• Browse through a magazine, reading articles of interest.
• Scan through a recipe book looking for specific information.
• Highlight points of key interest as you read a text together.
• Practise alphabetical order by using a telephone book or dictionary.
• Read through the chapter titles of a non-fiction book to get a general idea of the content.

After Reading

Always discuss what you read with your student to ensure that your student understands what was read and to encourage him to think critically about it.

Choosing Good Books

Successful readers read a great deal. Obviously the more people read, the better readers they become. They not only are able to read fluently but they acquire background knowledge on a number of issues so that new information can be more easily understood. Motivation (or a lack of motivation) is one reason why teenagers do not read. Good literature is the key to hooking young people on books. To find books that will interest your student:

• ask your student for titles or authors of books that he has read and enjoyed.
• consult librarians or bookstore staff for titles of popular books for teenagers.

Use this checklist for choosing books that are appropriate for your student.

Content

[     ] Is your student interested in the topic of the book?
[     ] Is the information in the book useful to your student?
[     ] Does it have an interesting first chapter?
[     ] Will your student be able to identify with one of the major characters in the novel in terms of culture, gender, age or issues?

[     ] Would you be interested in reading the book?

The Design and Layout

[     ] Is the appearance of the book suitable for teenagers? Is the type too large? Does it look like a ‘kids’ book?
[     ] Are the photographs or pictures in the book of children or teenagers? Do they reflect the content of the book?

Language

[     ] Is the book readable?
[     ] Is the tone condescending or overly juvenile?

Strategies of Successful Writers

Help your student develop the writing strategies that successful writers use to organize ideas and research information as well as write drafts and edit their writing.

Before Writing

Your student may have difficulty knowing where to start when he needs to write a
letter, assignment or essay. Your role is to help your student brainstorm and
organize his ideas.

Brainstorming

When your student wants to write a letter, assignment or essay, jointly brainstorm ideas and discuss how it could be written.

Organizing Ideas

Help your student organize his ideas into a list or outline. This may involve first putting all ideas on paper and then editing the list.

Researching

Discuss what information needs to be researched. Discuss ways to research this additional information:

• Library – school, public, reference library.
• Source – Periodicals, magazines, newspapers.
• Resource people – teachers, business people.
• Other – Internet, etc.

During Writing

Writing Drafts

Successful writers focus first on getting the ideas on paper and not on spelling. They might write several drafts before the final copy. Spelling should facilitate rather than hinder the writing process, allowing a focus on meaning not on mechanics. Discuss other instances when attention to spelling is not critical e.g. writing reminder notes for oneself, grocery lists.

When your student is writing the first draft of a letter, essay or assignment, encourage him to concentrate on getting the main points on paper. When he has trouble spelling a word, ask him to try to spell the word, leave it incorrectly spelled and come back to it during the proof-reading process.

Editing

Encourage your student to re-read and edit the first draft. Ask your student to reflect if:

• the main ideas have been stated.
• Any information is missing.
• a sentence or paragraph can be written more clearly.

After Writing

Proofreading

Spelling – Successful spellers use a number of strategies when spelling. These include:

• looking up the word in the dictionary.
• writing the word on a scrap piece of paper.
• asking someone how to spell it.
• finding another word that has the same meaning.
• using spell check on the computer.

Helping with Homework

Your student may wish to work with you on homework assignments and school projects. Your role in helping your student with homework is:

• to ensure that your student develops and strengthens literacy skills through doing homework with you.
• to help him complete his homework assignments.
• to help your student develop strategies for doing his own homework, assignments and other school related tasks.

Some Challenges in Helping with Homework

• Your student may only want to focus on getting the homework done allowing little time to focus on the thinking process or strengthening literacy skills. This is the time to be creative; it is up to you to find ways to ensure that some real learning happens while helping your student meet a deadline. You may need to negotiate with your student to work only half of the session on homework, the other half on reading or writing together.
• Sometimes teachers and parents are more concerned that your student obtains credits rather than ensuring he becomes a successful reader. You may feel pressured to focus on achieving marks. Good marks can be helpful in building your student’s self esteem but only if he feels that he earned them himself. It may be important that you define your role not only with your student but other people in your student’s life.
• It is sometimes difficult not to do too much of the assignment or homework for your student. After helping to ensure that your student has all the information and tools to complete his homework, it is important that you stand back and allow him to complete the assignment himself.

Some Homework Tips

Read The Homework Instructions Together

Ensure that you and your student both understand the homework instructions. Many students are frustrated by homework, because they are confused by the instructions. Reading the instructions first also gives a focus for reading the text or passage.

Build On The Prior Knowledge Of Your Student

Skim through the text first yourself. Discuss the concepts in the text with your student before reading it together. Ask your student to tell you what he knows about the subject. Then, build on this knowledge to ensure he understands the concepts and language used in the text.

Read Text With Your Student

Talk about the text as you read together. Show how you check your own comprehension. Encourage your student to think aloud and question information or ideas. Highlight information that relates to the homework instructions for the assignment.

Discuss The Text After Reading

Discuss key points from the text which relate to the instructions. Help your student to organize his thoughts orally or on paper.

Let Your Student Answer Questions

As your student writes his answer, you may be tempted to intercede and change words or phrases. However, your role at this point is to help with spelling and encourage your student to frame the answers himself.

Edit and Proofread

Encourage your student to edit and proofread his work for spelling and grammar mistakes after he has completed writing his answer.

Help Your Student Organize

Discuss the strategies that you use for dealing with assignments or essays. Encourage your student to use a school journal or calendar to keep track of assignments, exam dates, appointments, etc.

SUGGESTED READING

Here are some books that may answer some of your questions about reading and learning. All of these books were used to help compile this guide.

Learning to Read

Collins CoBuild Dictionary: English Learners Dictionary, Harper Collins Publishers, 1994.

This dictionary provides very clear examples of words within a meaningful context.

Don’t Talk to Me About Vowels, Ewing, Guy, Metro Toronto Movement for Literacy, 1994.

This book describes how to help adults learn to read by focusing on word families.

Spelling: Strategies You Can Teach, Tarasoff, Mary, Active Learning Institute, 1993.

This resource book provides information on how children learn to spell, what to teach in spelling and how to teach various spelling strategies.

Sequential Core Basics, Greig, David, Toronto Board of Education Adult Basic Education Unit, 1995.

These four books provide tutors with work sheets to help students learn letter/sound relationships.

Phonics They Use, Cunningham, Patricia, Harper Collins College Publishers, 1995.

This is a practical resource book for teaching letter/sound relationships during meaningful reading and writing activities. Activities are described for decoding one syllable words, blending consonants, and learning about vowels.

Reading Instruction that Makes Sense, Tarasoff, Mary, Active Learning Institute, 1993.

This guide provides practical reading strategies and background theory for teaching children how to read. The essentials for quality phonics instruction is described as well as the general sequence for teaching phonics.

Reading to Learn

Teach Someone to Read – A Step by Step Guide For Literacy Tutors, Rosenthal, Nadine, David S. Lake Publishers, 1987.

This book describes how a text or passage can be discussed literally as well as critically. Excellent examples of questions based on passages written by students are provided.

Comics to Classics: A Parent’s Guide to Books for Teens and Preteens, Reed, Arthea, International Reading Association, 1988.

This book provides a general framework for helping teens with reading. It also recommends some books for teens and preteens and describes strategies for improving reading skills.

In School, Dryden, Ken, Toronto. McLelland & Stewart, 1995.

Ken Dryden spent a year in high school in Mississauga. In this book, he examines the personal issues of students and teachers, and by doing so, humanizes education discussions.

The Reading Solution, Kropp, Paul, Random House, 1993.

This book provides advice on motivating reluctant or bored readers. It also recommends some computer games and books for teenagers.

The School Solution: Getting Canada’s Schools to Work for Your Children. Kropp, Paul, Hodson, Lynda, Random House of Canada, 1995.

This guide to education in Canada offers some valuable tips on homework. It also contains a helpful question and answer section detailing some of the concerns parents frequently raise with teachers and principals.

Homework without Tears, Canter, Hausner, Lee, Harper Perennial, 1991.

This guide provides some suggestions for specific problems to helping students deal with homework and assignments.

Tutoring One to One – Reading. Writing, and Relating, Jones, Donald M., Paedagogus Publishing Inc., 1994.

This book is a resource book for high school students who tutor other students.