Reading Rockets offers a wealth of reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help young children learn how to read and read better. Our reading resources assist parents, teachers, and other educators in working with struggling readers who require additional help in reading fundamentals and comprehension skills development.
Tutoring and Volunteering
There is strong evidence to suggest that carefully supervised and well implemented tutoring programs can make a difference with a struggling reader. Read more about the role of the volunteer tutor, how to develop a quality tutoring program, and the evidence that tutoring works.
This section contains 14 articles.
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Tutoring can offer kids the one-on-one attention busy teachers often can't provide. From simple homework help to intensive work on basic skills, tutoring can offer just the boost your child needs to succeed.
From Poor to Soar: Finding the Help Your Child Needs
Breaking Barriers Without Breaking the Bank
As a parent, you would do anything for your child. And when you see your child struggling, you want to jump in and help. But sometimes your instincts and desire aren't enough. When your child struggles with schoolwork and a tutor is necessary, one of the biggest roadblocks to getting help is money.
4 Steps to Finding an Excellent Tutor for Your Child
Whether your child is lost in a haze of elementary grammar rules, sinking fast in a jumble of Newton's laws in middle school, or lost in the details of an AP biology class, you need help. And usually you need help quickly, before your child falls way behind the class and never recovers. You want to find help before she feels like a failure, loses self esteem, and gives up on school. So, exactly what can you do....NOW?
How to Choose a Tutor (Or Other Education Service Provider)
When looking for a professional to deliver tutoring services to your child, what are some of the important questions to ask and issues to keep in mind?
The U.S. Department of Education developed this brief guide for reading tutors. It lists ways that tutoring helps both the learner and the tutor, and provides practical tips that can help tutors be more effective in their work.
Reading For Meaning: Tutoring Elementary Students to Enhance Comprehension
This article provides tutors with proven techniques for helping students acquire comprehension skills and strategies. In addition to building background knowledge about comprehension, it looks at six comprehension strategies and activities that support each strategy.
A tutoring program that will best serve children's needs should be carefully developed with those needs in mind. Here are eight steps to developing a tutoring program, from setting goals to developing a curriculum.
Tutoring Strategies for the Primary Grades
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. Learn about the strategies from modeling to KWL that are useful for tutoring children in grades one through three.
Tutoring Strategies for Preschool and Kindergarten
Whether a tutor is reading aloud, talking, or writing with a child, there are strategies for making these interactions even more valuable. Learn about these strategies in these tips for tutoring preschool and kindergarten children.
When tutors work closely with teachers and are provided with intensive, ongoing training, they can make a difference in a child's reading success. Learn what researchers have found about the elements of tutoring programs that lead to increase reading achievement.
What Concerned Citizens Can Do to Help All Children Read
From becoming a tutor to helping at the local library, there are concrete steps concerned citizens can take to help more children learn to read. Learn about these and more steps community members can take towards this goal.
The Role of the Volunteer Tutor
While volunteer tutoring is not meant to replace the work of a teacher, tutors can play very important roles in the lives of the children they work with. Learn about these roles and the types of tutoring programs that are available to provide young readers with one-on-one support.
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