If your child struggles with sounding out words, reading fluently, or understanding what they read, they may benefit from specialized reading tutoring. Early reading intervention can help them improve their reading skills, confidence, and performance at school.
What Are Signs Your Child May Need Reading Tutoring?
If your child struggles with any of the following skills, your child may need reading tutoring:
- Sounding out words
- Spelling words
- Reading with appropriate fluency
- Understanding material they read
- Reading avoidance
- Low confidence related to reading
How Can Reading Tutoring Build Reading Comprehension Skills?
Reading comprehension plays a role in nearly all aspects of school, including language arts, social studies, science, and math word problem solving. Reading tutoring can help your child develop this critical skill using research-based techniques. For example, a reading tutor might teach your child a tri-colored highlighting strategy, as follows:
- The reading tutor would teach your child that when we read, there are three elements we should look for - the topic, main idea, and important details.
- Students learn that the topic is 1, 2, or 3 words describing the passage. They learn to highlight the topic in blue.
- The main idea is what the author is saying about the topic, and they highlight the topic in green.
- Finally, the important details are salient pieces of information describing the main idea, and they highlight the main idea in green.
- To apply this strategy, students should read various passages and highlight the topic in blue, main idea in green, and important details in yellow. Their reading tutor can then teach them to make inferences and write summaries about the information they read in the passage. Additionally, reading tutoring can help your child learn to visualize the information they read, another key component of comprehension.
Read more about how reading tutoring can help improve your child’s reading comprehension skills at Strategies to Help Your Child Build Stronger Reading Comprehension Skills | Knowledge Plus Tutoring.
How Can Reading Tutoring Help with Decoding Words?
Reading tutoring can help your child develop stronger decoding skills, or the ability to accurately sound out words when reading. Specifically, using Orton Gillingham tutoring, your child can learn to decode words containing consonant-vowel-consonant patterns, blends, consonant digraphs, vowel digraphs, silent e patterns, multi-syllabic words, prefixes, suffixes, and roots. They can also learn spelling rules as part of the Orton Gillingham tutoring to further develop their spelling skills. This research-based, multi-sensory approach, which integrates tools such as colored sand, audio-visual flash cards, white boards, and magnetic tiles, can help your child develop much stronger decoding and spelling skills.
Read more about Orton Gillingham reading tutoring at What Is Orton Gillingham Tutoring? | Structured, Multisensory Reading Instruction - Knowledge Plus Tutoring
How Can Reading Tutoring Help with Reading Fluency?
Reading tutoring can also help your child develop stronger reading fluency skills. One strategy your child’s reading tutor may integrate is a choral reading technique to help them develop their fluency skills. With this technique, your child’s reading tutor would select a passage slightly below their reading level and perform the following steps:
- The student reads the passage out loud to the reading tutor as an initial read.
- The reading tutor reads the same passage aloud to the student to model good fluency.
- The student reads the same passage aloud with the reading tutor, trying to keep up with their fluency.
- The student reads the same passage aloud one more time, and the reading tutor praises them with the improvement in their fluency.
Who Benefits from Reading Tutoring?
- Early learners in grades K-3 who need help learning how to read
- Students who are reading below grade level
- Students who have dyslexia or a language-based learning disability
- Students who have poor self-esteem related to reading
If your child is struggling with reading, don’t wait for them to fall behind even more. At Knowledge Plus Tutoring, we specialize in helping students develop their reading skills through Orton Gillingham tutoring and specialized reading instruction. Contact us today to see how we can help your child thrive.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can reading tutoring help my child with dyslexia?
Yes, absolutely. A research-based, multi-sensory approach to reading, such as the Orton Gillingham methodology, can help students with dyslexia develop much stronger reading and spelling skills.
What is the difference between decoding and comprehension?
Decoding is the ability to sound out words when reading, whereas comprehension is the ability to understand the material one reads. Both skills are important for effective reading.
How often should my child receive reading tutoring?
The frequency of reading tutoring sessions can vary based on the specific needs and levels of each student. While many students benefit from 2-3 sessions per week, others may need more and some may need less.
Dr. Emily Levy holds her Doctorate Degree in Education and her Master’s Degree in Special Education. She has been helping students build their reading skills for over twenty years.
