A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

How Tutors Can Support Young Readers (continued)

Tutoring Strategies for the Primary Grades

Children learn language best when they are intellectually engaged, when they feel comfortable taking risks that learning requires, when they can share their ideas with others, and when they can take control of and reflect upon their own learning.

National Council of Teachers of English,
Standards for the English Language Arts, 1996

In grades one through three -- the primary grades -- children continue learning about language and literacy through exploration. They try out their ideas and use what they know to make sense of new concepts. Within this age group, children's reading and writing skills vary greatly. A few children will enter first grade able to read with considerable fluency. Some children will learn to read and write with ease. Others need the one-on-one attention of a tutor to develop an understanding of basic concepts, build specific skills, gain confidence, and become motivated to read and write.

This section presents tutoring strategies for working with children in the primary grades. Many of the strategies presented in the previous section will also be appropriate for a child in the primary grades.

Reading Together

Many tutoring programs use a scaffolding strategy that calls for tutors and children to read together. (See the discussion on scaffolding earlier in this chapter.) This does not replace reading aloud and independent reading, instead it is an additional strategy for promoting reading skills. The following are strategies tutors can use when reading with a child.

Explicit Modeling. This type of modeling helps children learn to think about what they already know while they are reading. Explain to the child that you are going to think aloud while reading. As you read a short passage aloud, talk about your thinking process--what you do to get meaning from the words and understand the text. For example: "That's a new word. It begins with cl. I don't know how to pronounce the next part--ue. Harriet is a spy. It must be clue because spies look for clues."

Implicit Modeling. This type of modeling also helps children think while they read. In this case, you would demonstrate how to use thinking skills without describing what you are doing. When a child is stuck on a word you can suggest strategies he or she can use to figure it out. The child can use these strategies immediately and when reading in the future. You might say, "Try reading the sentence again. " "Try reading the next sentence." "Where did the boy go at the beginning of the story?" "Where do you think he might be going now?"

Choral Reading. This strategy helps children become more fluent and confident readers. Ask the child to sit beside you or slightly in front of you. Hold the book together and ask the child to read along with you. Begin reading in a voice that is slightly louder and faster than the child's. As the child becomes more comfortable with reading the text, lower your voice and slow down your reading speed. If the child slows down, increase your loudness and speed again.

Echo Reading. This is another way to help a child develop confidence and fluency. Read aloud a line of text. Ask the child to read the same line. With a young child, point to the line of text as you are reading and encourage the child to do the same. Continue taking turns reading and rereading the same lines. When the child begins to read with more expression and fluency, suggest that he read aloud on his own.

Paired Reading.¹¹ Paired reading is a technique that allows tutors to vary the amount of support they provide to a child while reading aloud together. Explain to the child that sometimes you will read aloud together--duet reading and sometimes he or she will read alone--solo reading. Agree on two signals the child can use to switch back and forth from solo to duet reading. When the child gives you the duet signal, you will begin reading together. When the child feels ready for solo reading, she will give the solo signal and you will stop reading. You can nod your head or give some other simple sign of encouragement for her solo reading. Continue paired reading until the book or passage is completed.

Helping Children Develop Decoding Strategies

Engaged readers automatically use decoding, or cueing, strategies to figure out new words in text. Marie Clay, developer of the Reading Recovery program (see Examples of Reading and Tutoring Programs in Chapter 5), encourages teachers and tutors to help children learn at least four approaches to decoding. These approaches include:

• focusing on the meaning--semantics;
• relating sounds to letters--phonics;
• looking at how words and phrases are formed--syntax; and
• recognizing sight words--visual.

Some children develop decoding strategies over time with little direct instruction. Other children need one-on-one instruction to help them learn decoding strategies. Here are some tutoring strategies for decoding.

Focus on the Meaning. Young readers often figure out a new word by thinking about what would make sense in a sentence or story. You can help by suggesting that the child look at the pictures, then read a sentence again. If a child's guess at a word is incorrect, ask questions such as, "Does that make sense? What did the girl do at the last house she visited?"

Relate Sounds to Letters. Children apply what they already know about the relationships between letters and sounds to read a new word. For example, a child can read the word "train," because she knows the "tr" in this word makes the same sound as the "tr" at the beginning of "truck," a word she already knows. You can help by reminding a child what she already knows about letter-sound relationships and helping her use this knowledge to attack new words.

Look at How Words and Phrases are Formed. Compound words are formed by combining two words (e.g., playground). You can help a child read an unfamiliar compound word by demonstrating how to break it down into its parts. "That was a good guess -- raincoat. You recognized the first part of the word, 'rain.' But look at the second part of the word again. I'll cover the first part. Now, what does the second part say? That's right, it's bow. So what is the word? Yay! You got it, it's rainbow. Now the story makes more sense. After the rain, she saw a rainbow, not a raincoat."

Recognize Sight Words. High-frequency sight words make up about 50 percent of the words we read and often cause children problems. When a child masters high frequency sight words he experiences success which can boost his self-confidence and interest in reading. Children may be able to decode other words if they automatically recognize the sight words surrounding them. You can help children make flash cards for sight words to use with you during tutoring sessions and with his family at home. You and the child can celebrate and track progress in mastering sight words by recording them in a journal, making a paper chain, or adding "sight word leaves" to a tree. Here are 60 high-frequency sight words.

In his book, How to Teach Reading for Teachers, Parents, and Tutors, Edward Fry provides a list of the first 300 "Instant Words," together with numerous suggestions for games and other techniques for helping children master this basic vocabulary list.¹² These 300 words make up approximately two-thirds of all written material; and an average student learns about 100 of these common sight words each year in first, second and third grade.

Use Multiple Cues. When reading with a child you can model how to use several decoding systems at one time as problem solving strategies for determining how to read an unfamiliar word. This process encourages a child to think about what might make sense in the sentence. "What would fit here? The sentence begins, I put 'cr,' then I see the word soup. But what might she put in the soup that begins with cr. Oh, I know. It must be crackers. The girl put crackers in her soup."

Helping Children Understand What They Read

Reading involves making sense of the written word, or, in today's popular phrase, making meaning. Some children pronounce words correctly and read with apparent ease, but don't know the meaning of what they have read. As children increase their vocabularies, they begin to take more meaning from text. The child's capacity to derive meaning is the basic criterion for judging reading ability--not word recognition, knowledge of phonics, or any other single literacy skill. This has implications for the selection of reading materials and for assessment and tutoring strategies. Tutors should include chapter- and trade-books, and not rely solely on texts made up from grade-level word lists. They should encourage higher order thinking, and not emphasize simple recall of information--words or facts in isolation. Reading and writing tasks should be paired to stimulate and probe for understanding.

You can help by encouraging a child to talk about what she has read, by pointing out new words and explaining their meaning, and by using strategies such as the K-W-L approach to help children understand what they read.¹³

The K-W-L approach includes the following steps:

Here is an example of a K-W-L chart.

Helping Children Become Engaged Writers

Many reading and tutoring programs include writing as a part of each session because these two language skills are closely connected. As children become more skilled readers, they also improve their writing skills. The opposite is also true--writing contributes to growth in phonics, spelling, word recognition, memory, and reading comprehension.¹⁴ The Department of Education's READ*WRITE*NOW tutoring approach (see Examples of Reading and Tutoring Programs in Chapter 5) ends each session with a brief writing assignment built around what was read or a writing task the child needs to complete for school. Using a Talking About Books Journal, as described earlier in this chapter, is another way to support children's writing skills.

Many children enjoy writing their own books. They might make up a completely new story or follow the same pattern as used in a favorite book. For example, a child might make up a story about going on a tiger hunt instead of a bear hunt or put herself in the story instead of the main character.

Tutors can adapt the writing workshop approach used by many teachers in the primary grades. This approach is ideal for an ongoing tutoring program because it allows a child to experience writing as a process that evolves over time. You can serve as the audience for the child's writing. The writing workshop includes the following steps:¹⁵

Choosing a topic. The child decides what she wants to write about. You can help the child come up with a topic by thinking about his own experiences or books he has read.

Drafting. The child is likely to write several drafts of the same piece. Writing evolves over time so first drafts differ greatly from final ones. During the drafting step, young children may talk and draw as much as they write. Many times their first drafts are quite short.

First drafts are likely to have grammatical, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. At this point in the writing process, you do not need to correct these mistakes. The child will correct these mistakes as she revises, rewrites, and edits subsequent drafts. You can support the child by responding to the content of her drafts and asking questions to help her focus on how to express her ideas clearly. Keep your expectations realistic and tailored to the child's ability. Remember the importance of keeping the task at a level where the child can experience success and sustain motivation.

Revising. The child might decide she is no longer interested in the topic she chose or she might decide to expand it. Younger children are likely to make their stories longer. More experienced writers might add to descriptions, move sections, or rewrite sentences or paragraphs. You can continue to offer support by answering questions, making suggestions, and responding to the child's ideas.

Conferencing. In classroom writing workshops, children discuss their drafts and get encouragement and feedback from teachers and peers. You can assume this role by listening, asking questions, and making comments that guide the child to improve writing drafts.

Sharing. In classrooms, daily writing workshops end with a time for sharing. One or two children read their draft or a finished piece and their peers respond with helpful questions and comments (children will need some coaching to know which comments are "helpful" in tone and substance). This helps children understand how their audience responds to their writing. They learn what the audience understood and what they did not. This helps children make their messages as clear as possible. You can serve as the audience for a child's writing and encourage the child's family to do the same.

Editing. Older children finalize their drafts by reviewing and correcting errors in punctuation, grammar, and spelling. Ask the child to circle the words she thinks are misspelled. Many children have a visual memory that lets them know that a word is not written conventionally, even if they don't know how to spell it. Help the child use a dictionary to look up correct spellings.

Publishing. This step lets the child make the writing available to others. A tutoring program could accomplish this through a newsletter or collection of children's finished work. A child might bind her work with a cover and illustrations and share it with her family and teacher.

[Chapter 3: Tutoring Strategies for Preschool and Kindergarten]

[Involving Families in Tutoring Programs]