Transcript
Delia Pompa: What tutoring technology is available? How can tutors engage reluctant readers? For the answers to these and other questions, please join us for segment four of the Reading Rockets webcast, “Talking Tutoring.”
Narrator: Funding for the Reading Rockets webcast series is provided by the United States Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.
Delia Pompa: Hi. I’m Delia Pompa. Welcome to the Reading Rockets webcast, “Talking Tutoring.” In previous segments, we’ve discussed the impact of tutoring, and what to look for in a good tutoring program. Now it’s time to hear what’s on our audience’s mind. Welcome, Dr. Invernizzi, Ms. Prest, Ms. Hoover. Glad to have you back. If you’re ready, let’s dive right into the first question.
Audience Questioner #1: Hi. What’s your opinion of online tutoring, and what other technologies are good for providing extra help?
Delia Pompa: Take it, anyone.
Anne Hoover: Well, I think that online tutoring can oftentimes help to fix a particular spot that a child is having difficulty with. It is probably not going to be adequate if the child is really having trouble with reading at a more basic level. If it’s just, you know, a small problem with one particular vowel, say, those exercises might be very engaging to the child. But it certainly can’t replace an individual person, looking at the diagnostic and assessment work and then planning a program specifically for that child.
Delia Pompa: Others? Thank you. Let’s take an email question now. This one comes from Sarah, in Massachusetts, and Sarah asks, has No Child Left Behind had any impact on the number and quality of tutoring programs available? Carole, what are your thoughts on this?
Carole Prest: Certainly, No Child Left Behind has created a funding stream called Supplemental Educational Services. And that’s providing a voucher, essentially, to parents of low-income children. That can be worth up to $2,000. And so in that case, parents get to choose among a range of state-approved providers. What’s happened is many new providers have sprung up in the last three or four years. They offer very different programs. Some programs provide as little as 10 hours of tutoring for that $2,000 voucher. Others, like BELL, will provide well in excess of 100 hours. So I think that parents have a wide range of solutions. They need to look at things like how many hours, class size, qualifications of the tutors, curriculum, and most importantly, outcomes. Every… every really good provider will have outcomes to share, and if you don’t see those outcomes, then I would keep looking.
Delia Pompa: Great. Thank you. We have another question here in the studio.
Audience Questioner #2: Hello. Can parents and grandparents make good volunteer tutors, and what other sources are available to help us build the volunteer tutoring program?
Delia Pompa: Go ahead.
Carole Prest: You know, it’s a great question, and we are at such a phenomenal point in our nation’s history. There is such focus now on college students volunteering, but also Baby Boomers. We have something in excess of 5 million Baby Boomers retiring every year, and when you ask them what they want to do, they want to do something with children and education. And so Marcia mentioned, there’s a group called Experience Corps, that is recruiting seniors to come and provide great tutoring and I would go check out their website.
Delia Pompa: Thanks very much. We’re going to go back to email now. We have one from Katie in Chicago, who’s asking, how long should extra tutoring last? All the way through high school? A grading period? I actually asked this question during a break. Marcia, what did you say?
Marcia Invernizzi: Well, I… a small percentage of students will need tutoring and… and certainly support throughout their schooling. But it’s certainly not the 20 percent that are currently designated as learning disabled in our nation’s schools right now. That percentage can be lowered dramatically by providing early intervention right from the get-go. Starting with students, as soon as they walk into kindergarten, perhaps providing additional instruction to make up for lost opportunities or lack of experiences. First, perhaps, in small groups, and if needed then moving to more intensive one-on-one tutoring.
But the research is suggesting that the… the proportion of students who will need continued support for over the long haul is under 3 percent, certainly not 20 percent.
Delia Pompa: Carole, did you want to add anything to that?
Carole Prest: No, I think that… I think that Marcia said it well. I mean what we do is, we do and a pre-post tests of students every… period that work with us, so it could be during the school year, it could be summer. Some people close that achievement gap within the one summer that we work together. Others it takes more then two… two or three sessions. But typically we see that the more they get involved, the more they want to keep coming back, the greater the gains.
Delia Pompa: Alright.
Anne Hoover: And I’ve also observed that there are some tutoring programs that… give you a package sort of deal, that you sign up for 20 lessons whether, you know, know whether you’re going to need it or not. And I think if you’re going to go with that kind of a program, then you’ve got to be doubly careful to see the assessments and be sure that you’re getting what you need. You may need less, you may need more, so trying to pre-pay or pre-decide how long you need tutoring could be a mistake.
Delia Pompa: That’s a good thing to watch out for.
Anne Hoover: Yes.
Delia Pompa: Let’s go back to our audience for another question.
Audience Questioner #3: Hello, do you have any guidance on how to help older kids serve as mentors for younger, struggling readers?
Marcia Invernizzi: I’ll take that one. First of all the same qualifications have to apply. They have to be committed, they have to enjoy working with children and they have to love reading, those three things are absolutely essential. And the committed part is even harder to get with… with older… but… but still adolescent… learners.
But certainly if you support them in the way that for example we, as Book Buddies, we’ve supported our volunteer students… tutors, excuse, by training them, providing a consistent structured lesson plan, organizing the materials ahead of time for them, showing them to do each component of the lesson plan, being there to model the behaviors, demonstrate each part and observing them as they do it to provide immediate feedback rather then let problems develop go astray, I think that… high schools students could make effective tutors of younger, younger children. That was your question right?
Audience Questioner #4: Yes, thank you.
Anne Hoover: I also would like to add one of the things we find is really an important part of our reading lessons is to end a lesson with the tutor reading aloud to the student in order to… promote a love of reading and the written text when children are struggling to do it themselves. And I think… having teens, high school students read aloud to their… student would be a wonderful part of the program.
Marcia Invernizzi: Yes and younger students really do love working with teenagers, so they have an advantage in that way so they can be great role models.
Delia Pompa: We’re going to back the e-mail bag now, thanks for those answers and this is a question from Karen in Virginia who’s asking if tutoring is an option for kids in kinder… children in kindergarten and if so, what should it look like? Ann, Marcia?
Anne Hoover: I would certainly say it is an option for a child in kindergarten if they… already are exhibiting signs that reading, learning to read is going to be difficult for them. Some things to keep in mind with a child as young as five or… or younger, are that the sessions should be short and they should be frequent. A child needs more sessions per week then an older student and one must pay close attention to their attention span and vary the activities throughout that time, maybe a half an hour would be enough, but they need to do three, four, five different activities over that time.
It’s important that the lessons by very positive and encouraging so that they are setup to be successful in school.
Delia Pompa: Great, thank you.
Carole Prest: I agree.
Delia Pompa: And thank you. Do you want to add something?
Marcia Invernizzi: I was just going to say that… I… I agree with everything Ann said that’s so important for young students to be engaged and to have a variety of… of activities and… and in game-like formats. But going back to the idea of… of universal literacy screening we know at the very beginning of kindergarten… children who have lacked the foundational emergent literacy skills coming into kindergarten and we can and should be working with them, either in small group formats or in… in one-on-one, perhaps starting out in small groups and then moving to the one-on-one.
But as Ann said, more frequently, more varied game, like certainly developmentally appropriate, but yes…
Delia Pompa: It’s a lot like play just… great, back to the audience.
Audience Questioner #5: What role should principals play in providing tutoring options in their schools or communities?
Carole Prest: I think principals are… play a very critical role. Principals really are the gateway to that school, so many providers will want to serve a particular community or a particular school community and if we can’t get to the principal, it’s almost impossible to setup a program. We like the fact that at BELL we have programs in the schools so that students don’t sort of disappear on their way out and on their way home. But having that principal be… supportive to the program, encouraging children to participate, encouraging their parents to signup, not… not looking at tutoring as a sign of failure, but rather tutoring as a sign of giving these children every possible opportunity that we can.
We like… we like to use the term these days of extending learning or expanded learning, not tutoring as something that is a sign that your child is a failure but that we’re just giving you even more opportunity to grow and be everything you can be.
Delia Pompa: Thanks.
Marcia Invernizzi: I’d like to add one thing to that.
Delia Pompa: Sure.
Marcia Invernizzi: I think it’s very educational for a principal to tutor themselves at least for one year, that they would learn a lot.
Delia Pompa: We’ll send that message. Again we have a question from the audience.
Audience Questioner #6: If a teacher wanted to start a tutoring program for ELL students, what would be the first steps that teacher would take?
Delia Pompa: Marcia.
Marcia Invernizzi: Well… I think that… collaboration is… is really key. If… if a teacher’s wanting to start an intervention for their ELL students, first you have to find out well, what are the languages, what are the culture and so forth. But here collaboration is so important because if the teacher who is providing the language instruction, the teacher who is providing the literacy instruction and the teacher who is providing the content instruction, all collaborate, then the child’s exposure to these concepts and vocabulary terms… will be more frequent and this collaboration will result in greater exposure to the language, literacy and content that you’re trying to impart.
So I would say, that would be the first step is… get with the… all the other educators who are involved in teaching the ELL students and collaborating on what that would look like.
Delia Pompa: Did you want to add something Carole?
Carole Prest: No, I think that that really… covers it. I would also say… don’t leave out the parents, just because the parents may not have English as their primary language, doesn’t mean that they don’t need to be involved and supportive. So a child can go home and read to his or her parents. A parent can check homework even if they’re not in a position to help with homework because research has… has proven that if parents are engaged, supportive of their children, that goes a long way to help those children be successful in school.
Delia Pompa: Thanks, you all have prompted lots of questions, we have another one.
Audience Questioner #7: How can a tutor engage a child whose academic difficulties have made her a reluctant reader?
Delia Pompa: Anne, can you take one?
Anne Hoover: Well yes, I think that one of the things that we emphasize with our tutors is that their first job is to form rapport and a strong relationship with their child. And one of the ways of doing that is finding out what the child’s interests are. So for example… you may have a little boy who doesn’t like to read, but he’s very interested in sports, whether it be basketball, baseball, whatever. Then of course the sports page is a wonderful place to start or perhaps baseball cards.
Another child maybe very interested in making things and so then if that child has an opportunity to read the instructions and follow diagrams of how to make a paper airplanes or perhaps how to cook brownies or rice krispy treats, actually using what the child is interested in as a means of engaging them in reading has been very successful for us and then being able to write about those experiences extends that… that even further.
Delia Pompa: Thank you very much. We’d like to get a lot more questions in, so let me turn to our audience again.
Audience Questioner #8: Hello. With summer coming are there any suggestions… are there any suggestions on how to incorporate a summer meals program with tutoring in a low income community?
Carole Prest: I can take that. The… actually Title I schools are very often identified as… as feeder locations for children who are qualified for free and reduced meals during the school year. What we’ve done at BELL is we’ve formed partnerships with school systems and we said, let us run your summer learning program and so the school, through Title I dollars, makes breakfast and lunch available but then… the students get academics in the morning, enrichment in the afternoon, field trips, community service activities, guest speakers… and so they get two very healthy meals everyday.
And I should point out that… research has been done recently on… on childhood obesity and what they have found is that if students are not getting nutritious meals during the summer, that child obesity… problem gets worse. And so… I would say that looking for a summer learning program that is somehow linked into Title I free and reduced meals programs is a great opportunity to keep kids healthy… help combat childhood obesity and give them an enriching… summer learning opportunity.
Delia Pompa: We really do have a lot more questions for you but we’ve run out of time. So… I thank you for your very thoughtful answers and I’d like you to… ask you to do one more thing and that’s I’d… that I’d like each of you to leave us one final thought with the audience… today. And can we start with you Anne?
Anne Hoover: Yes, I think that it… again as has been said before here, tutoring is not a negative experience, it’s a positive one. And in fact, it can be one of the most powerful ways of… enriching and… engaging a student.
Delia Pompa: Thanks, Carole.
Carole Prest: You know around the globe, countries other then the United States, students spend way more hours in the classroom then we do here. And it’s showing the difference between how our children are prepared and how other countries are prepared. And so rather then thinking about tutoring as a negative, as a sign that you child has failed, I think we need to think about it as an opportunity to enrich these children and prepare them as well as we possibly can for this next century.
Marcia Invernizzi: Absolutely and I’d just like to add that it’s also cost effective, it’s one of the most important investments we can make in our… in our children’s future and in our future as a nation. I started out by quoting the NAPE figures of 37 percent of our fourth graders unable to read… at a basic level out of grade appropriate text. Twenty percent of our… our nations’ students are currently identified as learning disabled and yet we have research to show that if you work through early identification and early intervention, providing small group and one-on-one tutoring right from the get-go, that you can reduce the figures to under three percent.
And I think that this… this is a cost saving… actually move… so I don’t think we should let cost keep us back. In… in the long run, by investing in early intervention through tutoring, small group and one-on-one, you will be saving millions and billions and trillions of dollars down… down the road and… reducing the number of children experiencing reading difficulties and increasing… the success of… of students in terms of… of high school graduation and continued education for a lifetime.
Delia Pompa: Well said all of you, very powerful and thank you very, very much. And thank you for joining us. To view all segments of this webcast and for more information about how you can help struggling readers in your life, please visit us at www.readingrockets.org. And while you’re there, please let us know your thoughts, click on webcasts to find our online survey. Again, thank you for joining us.
Narrator: Funding for the Reading Rockets webcast series is provided by the United States Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.
The panelists answer questions from viewers about technology and tutoring, how NCLB has affected tutoring options, reluctant readers, what kind of person makes a good volunteer tutor, summer learning opportunities, and more.