I am also still researching and writing about psychological harms in the classroom. I have found some new problems we should discuss. Stay tuned. I’m just finishing my research.
Tutoring Hint #2: Select a teaching curriculum that fits the specific needs of your child or student. Do not just use the curriculum everyone else is using or something that you found on the Internet. Select your tutoring curriculum carefully.
If your tutoring curriculum and methods do not fit the needs of your child or student, your tutoring sessions will not be successful. When children fail to learn to read, or do not improve their comprehension while being tutored, the problem is most likely neither the child nor (in most cases) the teacher. The problem is the teaching method.
I have used vowel clustering for the past 23 years while working with all ages. I have worked in both inner city and rural locations. I have worked with students diagnosed with dyslexia, ADHD, Asperger’s, autism, and an array of cognitive processing problems. Vowel clustering allows me to adjust my tutoring lessons to the specific needs of each student. This is vital. Too often, we expect students to adjust to the curriculum. Instead, we should select a curriculum that adjusts to the student’s needs. I worked with a young student one year who had been held back in kindergarten. My first thought was, how can you fail kindergarten? Unfortunately, the student could not memorize the required number of words to be promoted to first grade. Vowel clustering does not use memorization. By the end of the year, the student was reading above his age level. In my new book, Why Can’t We Teach Children to Read? Oh, but Wait, We Can, I give several examples showing how I adapted vowel clustering to meet the needs of each individual student.
Free preview of Why Can't We Teach Children to Read: Oh, but Wait, We Can
“Do you think she can ever learn to read?” She was fifteen years old when she first came to my reading clinic. She had failed in school for nine straight years. She was brought to my attention by a community worker who was searching for help. The student could not read even simple one syllable words (cat, and, or the), did not know the lower-case alphabet (only the capital letters), and did not know any of the vowel sounds, not even the short a vowel sound. After five minutes of working with the student, I said, “Yes, she can learn to read.”
How could I be so sure? Why did I think she could learn to read when everyone at her school had stated for the past nine years that she would never be able to learn to read? Quite simply, because she knew the consonant letter sounds. If the student could learn consonant sounds, then the student could learn vowel sounds. All I needed to do was find a teaching method that would work.
In three-and-a-half years, I taught her to read. How? Vowel Clustering, the method that I teach in this book.
Another student came to me after failing kindergarten. He was back on track and reading above age level in less than one year. How? Vowel Clustering.
A student who went all the way through first grade and did not learn one single word started to show improvement after only one week with vowel clustering.
Two struggling students moved up two grade levels in reading after 48 hours of instruction, and two failing students moved up four grade levels in reading in one year with vowel clustering.
Vowel Clustering works with every student, regardless of age or reading problem. Why? Because vowel clustering teaches students to break words down into letter sounds and then put those sounds back together and read the word. Vowel Clustering also teaches students to build words from a shared vowel sound. Vowel Clustering works with the “oral language system.” There is nothing to memorize—no weekly word lists, no rules. Vowel Clustering also teaches reading fluency, comprehension, spelling, and word meanings.
Vowel clustering has been tested and proven to work with struggling, at-risk, and failing students. At my Reading Orienteering Club, we have had several students enter the program failing, then move up four grade levels in reading in one year using vowel clustering.
If you’d like a longer preview from the book, click here.
If you need help in tutoring, please contact me. I’m always happy to help.
It’s summer, but it is very important to keep children reading. Check back often—I’ll try to find some ideas to help keep the “I’m bored” comments at bay.
Earlier Post: Helpful Hint on Tutoring to Help Students Overcome Learning Losses: #1
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