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Reading

Tutoring Strategies

Whether reading to a child, sharing reading, or listening to a child read aloud, there are many strategies a tutor can use to improve the skills of a young reader. At Inspired Learning, we employ strategies – from modeling to KWL – that are useful for tutoring children in grades one through three.

In a nutshell . . .

  • reading together
  • developing decoding strategies
  • understanding what is read

Reading Together

Our tutoring programs use a scaffolding strategy that calls for tutors and children to read together. 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. 

Implicit modeling
This type of modeling also helps children think while they read. When a child is stuck on a word the tutor suggests strategies he or she can use to figure it out. The student is encouraged to use these strategies immediately and when reading in the future. 

Choral reading
This strategy helps children become more fluent and confident readers because the tutor and student read together. 

Echo reading
This is another way to help a child develop confidence and fluency. The tutor will read aloud a line of text. Then, the child to read the same line. The two continue taking turns reading and rereading the same lines. 

Paired Reading
Paired reading is a technique that allows tutors to vary the amount of support they provide to a child while reading aloud together. Sometimes the tutor and the student willread aloud together – duet reading – and sometimes he or she will read alone – solo reading. 

Developing Decoding Strategies

Engaged readers automatically use decoding, or cueing, strategies to figure out new words in text. Our tutors 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
  • recognizing sight words – visual

Some children develop decoding strategies over time with little direct instruction. Other children, who are weaker in this area, need one-on-one instruction to help them learn decoding strategies. 

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Understanding What is 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.

IL tutors 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.

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

K – What I know.
The child lists what he already knows about a topic that is discussed in a book he is going to read.

W – What I want to know.
The child thinks of some questions he has about this topic and adds them to the chart.

L – What I learned or still need to learn.
While he reads the book – alone or with the tutor – he can think about what he is learning. After the reading, the tutor and student discuss the book and add what was learned to the chart along with any information he still needs to learn.
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