English Language Arts Tutoring

Our Tutoring Process

For reading students up through middle school, we at Above Grade Level have a following process to help them with their reading:

• We provide a free on-line assessment so we can identify any skill gaps.
• With the use of the assessment results, we use our materials to work on skill gaps.
• We also match this proposal up with the Texas state English/language arts standards for a given grade.
• Based on the time of the school year, we match up the outline with what a student is currently learning in class.
• We provide a free consultation with parents with our proposed course of action.
• We also help with homework if parents would like us to do this as well.
• In addition, we can help students with any writing issues that may have.

In addition, Above Grade Level offers tutoring options as follow: 

• 1:1 In-Home tutoring
• 1:1 Remote/virtual tutoring
• Small classes are available at a discount
• No minimum amount or number of hours required
• The free on-line assessment is recommended but optional 
• Tutoring available for writing issues 

Common Reading Issues

• Some younger students may not have a good grasp of common high frequency words.  This is usually the first step for reading and it is important to get these students to expand their vocabularies.
• Also, some younger students may have a good hold on high frequency words but struggle in sounding out new words.  Generally, phonics is not emphasized in schools like it was years ago and this can lead to issues for young students.
• Students of all ages seem to struggle with spelling.   With spell check, spelling is not as important in writing as it was years ago.
• Some students have a lower oral vocabulary and this can be the result of below average amount of reading by a student.
• Another issue for students is low reading comprehension skills.  This can be the result of a low oral vocabulary or reading fluency issues.

How Our Assessment Helps

The reading assessment results can be grouped into 6 categories.  The 6 can further be broken down in the foundational and the more advanced categories.

• High-Frequency Word Sub-Test (examines a student’s ability to recognize frequently-used words and responses are timed)
• Work Recognition Sub-Test (measures a student’s ability to recognize a variety of different leveled lists of words)
• Phonics Sub-Test (assesses a learner’s knowledge of basic phonetic rules and sounding-out skills.  
• Spelling Sub-Test (assesses a student’s spelling skills and his or her exposure to age-appropriate words)
• Oral Vocabulary (Word Meaning) Sub-Test (measures a student’s oral vocabulary skills using leveled lists of vocabulary words)
• Reading Comprehension (Silent Reading) Sub-Test (evaluates a student’s ability to answer factual and inferential questions about a silently red story)

Below is an example of the output for a 4th grade reading student.  The first three scores comprise the reading foundations and these are essential before students can increase their vocabulary and reading comprehension scores. 

This student has good scores in the foundations as each score is at the maximum level tested or the student tested higher than the 4th grade level.   That is why there is a green check mark for each of these three categories.  The more advanced scores show more concern for this student.  

This student is below his 4th grade level for spelling which is common for students today given spell-check options on-line.   Also, this student tested below grade for reading comprehension.  So while we would devote some tutor time to spelling, the majority of the time would be to work on reading comprehension.

For early elementary students we have an additional test on phonemic awareness and an example is shown below.