GENERAL INFORMATION FOR TUTORING

You should know certain things about tutoring before you begin your work in the schools. Most of what applies to good teaching is also appropriate in the tutoring situation. However, there are additional principles that are unique to tutoring and this chapter will include them.

PRINCIPLES OF REMEDIATION

As you begin work with your student(s), you should be aware that the goal of what you are doing is to improve the reading ability of the student by carefully noting how your student learns and what difficulties he encounters and determining what you can do to alleviate those difficulties. The following material is adapted from Manzo and Manzo (p. 209-216).

• You must establish rapport with your student and be very concerned about motivation. Often it is the first few minutes of a session that will determine if anything of value is accomplished during the remainder of the session. You should be very careful in the first sessions with your student and at the beginning of all sessions to win his attention and commitment. If your student does not enjoy the first sessions with you, it may be very difficult for you to change his original impression of the kinds of things you will be doing. This is not to say that you should only play games or do only fun activities in early sessions. It does mean that you should plan your early sessions carefully with things that will make the child want to return. Every time you see the child, you should take a minute or two at the beginning of the session to establish rapport with him for that day.

• Research indicates that it is better to cover more material faster than less material at a slow pace. This does not mean that you should not repeat activities. In fact distributed practice is a very good thing to do.

• Disabled readers need to see evidence of their progress. They need this encouragement in order to persist in their work.

• As a tutor, your role is to encourage and support. There are many things you can do to this end. For example, ask questions that have more than one answer. Accept answers that are plausible even though they might not have been the ones you were thinking of. If the answer is not exactly wrong but not right either, say something like "That was an excellent guess... but not quite right," mixing encouragement and correction.

• Use advance organizers. Introduce a book before you read it. Talk about what it is about or have the student guess what it might be about, based on the cover picture. Before you start a session, tell the child what you are going to learn, how they are going to learn it, and then review what you did afterwards.

• Model enjoyment of reading. This can be done when you read aloud to your student. He can tell if you like what you are doing. Or it can be in your telling your student about something you have recently read. Let the child see and hear about the value of reading and the enjoyment it can bring.

• Build megacognitive awareness. Help your student understand what he does when he reads by thinking aloud when you read and are trying to figure something out. Model your self-questioning and self-appraisal as you read so that your student will know what happens in the mind of a reader as she reads.

• Reduce distractions for your student. Your work with students may not be in a very ideal location. There may be distractions that will hamper concentration. You should do what you can to reduce these. The student's focus when you are working with him should be on the material, not the things that are occurring down the hall.

• You should provide for your student's basic needs before you even attempt to instruct him. Over 40 years ago, Maslow illustrated this fundamental idea on a triangle.

For example, if your child's mother was admitted to the hospital the previous night, he may need to talk about that before you begin instruction. His safety and stability have been threatened and he will not be able to concentrate on reading until his concerns have been allayed.

• Have some fun! Enjoy what you are doing and make the session enjoyable to the child. Do things that kids like. Relate to children and their needs.

• Recognize that your student is behind and catching up will take some time. If your student is two years behind in reading, he probably will not get caught up in a year, even with special help. Be realistic in your expectations and do not get discouraged if gains are not rapid.

HANDWRITING

Handwriting must be clear and consistent for disabled readers. A letter made a way that is unfamiliar to them can cause them to be unable to recognize a word. This does not mean that you have to become an expert in penmanship, but you should give handwriting some thought and effort.

Manuscript writing is what you might call printing. Typically, letters are made using the Zaner-Bloser Manuscript Alphabet. (Zaner-Bloser is a company whose system has been widely adopted.)

Zaner-Bloser also has a cursive alphabet. The familiar name for this is writing. Note the clean lines, consistent slant and shape, even spacing and size of the letters. When you write for children, try to eliminate stylized letters and flourishes.

Another system of writing, called D'Nealian Handwriting, may be used in the schools where you work. In this system the letters in the manuscript are more oval than round and are somewhat slanted. Because most lower case letters are written in one stroke, the switch to cursive is theoretically easier for children.

Unfortunately, for disabled readers recognizing D'Nealian letters is sometimes difficult. They seem to confuse the lower case /k/ with an /r/, for example. Find out which method of handwriting is used in your school and follow that method as well as you can.

READING ALOUD TO CHILDREN

One of the best activities you can do with the children you tutor is to read aloud to them. If you have taken a children's literature course or a reading methods course, you will remember that an expressive reading is advised. That is probably not entirely desirable for reading aloud to disabled readers. In the case of the children with whom you will be working, the overriding characteristic of your reading to them should be their interaction with the book.

Some of your children may never have been read to. They may not know nursery rhymes because no one in their homes read or said them to the children. Your goal in reading to children is to get them to think about the book you are reading, to inspect the pictures, and to make predictions about what will occur at various points in the book. They must interact with the book and become involved in the story.

There are certain general principles that you should follow when you read aloud to your students:

• If you are reading a picture book, be sure the child can see the pictures. If you are reading to a single child, you can place the book on the table between you. If there is a small group of children, you could position them in a semi-circle around you.

• You should be familiar with the book. Be certain to read the book beforehand and develop some ideas about how you will involve the child in the reading. Spontaneity is a good thing and you should surely follow-up on any comments made by children as you read. But be prepared and know what you are going to do when you read each particular book to the child.

• Introduce the book. Talk about the author, title, and cover picture. Tell the child why you like this book or what made you want to read it. Say something like, " This is the story of a boy who has a cat that he loves very much. Do you have a cat? What do you like about cats? Can you tell from the picture how this boy feels about his cat? What do you think this story will be about?" Then, before you read, go through the book quickly, drawing attention to the pictures and making comments about what seems to be happening in the story, based on the pictures.

• Read with expression. You should reflect the tone of the story in your voice. You may use different voices for different characters in the story. Vary the pace at which you read to add to the drama of the story. Allow plenty of time for the child to see the pictures and think about what he has heard.
• Do not read too fast. This is the most common mistake made by people who have had little experience reading aloud to child.

• Encourage predictions throughout the book. Confirm or refute predictions as you read. If a child's prediction was far from what really occurred in the book, say something like, "That was a good guess (or an interesting idea) but let's see what the author wrote." In other words, do not be harsh in your comments or you will discourage the child from making future guesses.

• Pay attention to how your student responds. If he is getting restless, draw his attention to a particular feature of a picture, or vary your voice or speed, or ask him what he thinks will happens next.

• Allow the child to respond to the book. Do not schedule the reading of a book so close to the end of the session that you cannot talk about the book, how it was like or unlike original predictions, whether the child liked the book or not.

• If your student has never listened to books before, realize he may have difficulty paying attention. If this seems to be the case, you could allow him to color, play with Play Doh, or draw as he listens.

• If the oral reading is not working, stop reading. This will probably not happen often but sometimes you may select a book that does not appeal to your student. If this is the case, you do not have to complete it. In fact, it would be better to stop than to subject the child to something that is very unpleasant to him.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

In working with disabled children, you should adhere to all the good teaching practices you know plus some other specific considerations for the special population you serve. The best teachers (and tutors) have good memories. They know how students feel and how they react to different kinds of treatment from teachers. Remember well and you will be a good tutor.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell

where his influence stops.

--Henry Brooks Adam