After School Tutoring
At the start of this year, 100% of my students were reading below grade-level. The majority of my students were able to identify less than 30 upper and lower case letters. The remediation necessary to address this significant gap in student ability has meant I started the year teaching Kindergarten standards. My most recent data shows 86% of my students are still below grade-level. To address this I started an after school tutoring program for my students. Every Monday, I meet with students reading DRA level 2. On Wednesday I meet with students reading DRA level 4. Students are expected to currently be reading at a DRA level 10. I work with students from 2:15 - 3:30. During this time, I focus on letter sounds, kindergarten and first grade sight words, phonics skills, and reading strategies. In this country, “63 percent of fourth graders read below grade level, contributing to 8,000 students dropping out of high school every day.” In Maryland, 60% of fourth graders are not considered to be reading at a proficient level (Reading is Fundamental, 2015). When students do not catch up and close the gap in their reading level during early elementary school, the chances they ever catch up drop drastically. Low reading achievement in early elementary has also been linked to higher rates of incarceration and unemployment (Teach for America, 2011). This opportunity opens doors for students to develop stronger foundational skills that will set them up for success for the rest of their life.
By offering students an additional hour and fifteen minutes of instruction every week, I hope to close the achievement gap I see in action in my classroom. While my school does offer some extended learning opportunities, they have only been offered to students reading one or two levels below grade level. There have not been opportunities for students who are significantly below grade level. In order for the opportunity to be approved, I worked with my principal to get approval and created a permission slip for my students’ families to sign.
After School Tutoring
I worked with my colleague, Natalie Frank, to develop a plan for the after school tutoring program. She reached out to the principal on our behalf to secure the appropriate approval. The email shown here is the our principal's response to our proposal. After we received this approval, I sent home permission slips as well as a message on Class Dojo to ensure students were able to participate. There is currently no after school program hosted by the school. This opportunity develops my students' foundational readings skills which opens the door to greater academic success.
This is the permission slip I sent home with students inviting them to after school tutoring. I outlined what skills I would be working on so families knew the purpose of the program. Letter identification and letter sounds are foundational skills students are expected to have mastered in kindergarten. As such, there is not dedicated time to teach these skills in my first grade curriculum. By extending the school day to focus on these skills, I am giving students the opportunity to build their reading skills.
The video shown here shows me praising a student for using a specific reading strategy we have been working on during guided reading. The small format of the tutoring sessions allow me to work more closely with each student to ensure they are using their reading strategies. I use running records I have taken during the regular school day as well as observational notes throughout tutoring to select specific skills and strategies to focus on during tutoring. I am able to spend more time directly focusing on each individual student and the specific skill they are working on.
This video below shows me working one-on-one on a students with a speech IEP. During the regular school day, I am not able to spend time working specifically with him on his articulation. However, during after school tutoring, I have the flexibility to incorporate speech exercises into our lessons. The video shows him practicing his articulation of the letter L, a task he has been working on with the school's speech pathologist.
The video shown here is of students working on letter sound recognition. The guided reading framework provided by my school does not have time dedicated to teaching letter sounds. Without a strong understanding of letter names and sounds, students will not be able to become successful readers and writers. This opportunity for additional practice gives students the opportunity to develop these skills and strengthen their foundation needed for reading growth. This video shows students successfully identifying the letter sound Y, a letter most of these students did not know at the start of the year.
Below is a chart of the basic schedule each day of tutoring follows. I start each day with a snack to ensure students' physical needs are met and they are able to focus on learning. On Monday, I meet with two students who are currently reading at a level four. I then spend 25 minutes reviewing letter sounds. This helps strengthen their foundational skills. We then review kindergarten and first grade sight words. I then teach a full twenty minute guided reading lesson. At the end of the session, I give students a dictation sentence that includes some of the phonics skills we worked on during the guided reading portion of the session. On Wednesday, I meet with four students reading between a level six and an eight. After snack, we focus on first grade sight words, then move into working on segmenting and chunking words because these are the skills these students struggle the most with. We then participate in a full guided reading lesson and end with dictation.
In order to select and support students for the tutoring program, I needed to have a strong understanding of who was struggling with the most foundational phonics skills. Unfortunately, my school follows a curriculum that does not have integrated phonics assessments. To be the most effective teacher possible, I knew I needed to better understand what skills my students required additional support with. I was introduced to a professor of literacy and special education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst who had spent the past 15 years creating a phonics assessment. I reached out to Professor Hosp to learn more about her assessment, Key Phonics. After our initial meeting, I asked how I could get the assessment into my school. Part of her organization's mission is to ensure all schools and students have access to high quality assessments. To achieve this, for every student whose school is able to pay for the assessment, she will give it to a student whose school is unable to pay for the assessment. As a Title I school, she offered to give the assessment to my school for free, making it truly accessible. This opportunity has opened doors to my students as they are able to receive more targeted and effective instruction as a result of the assessment data.
Key Phonics Assessment
I reached out to my principal to get her approval to start using the assessment. She agreed to allow three first grade teachers to use this assessment as a trial, and is open to bringing it to all teachers first grade through fifth grade starting next year. This data provides vital information about my students’ phonological understanding that informs my instruction and changes how I can serve my students.The emails below show the communication I had with the Key Phonics founder and my school.
The data shown here is from the screener assessment on Key Phonics. It shows that five students had not mastered CVC and blends as of the middle of the year. These are skills we expected students to have mastered by the end of November. This data shows that these students need additional remediation to be able to advance to more complex reading skills such as CVCC and digraphs. These five students, as well as the one student who had not mastered CVCC words now attend after school tutoring to help lessen the gap between the skills they have mastered and on-grade level expectations.
Evidence of Success
Student data as well as feedback from parents and students shows that the tutoring program has been successful Parents and students have recognized the positive impact the tutoring program has had on student growth. The artifacts below show reading data, a student discussing why he enjoys staying after school, a parent reaching out on Dojo to approve their child staying and saying thank you for the additional support, and a transcript form a parent who shared what she has noticed at a student support meeting. The information below shows students have taken advantage of the opportunity and benefited directly from it.
The data here shows the growth students who attend tutoring have made thus far. The DRA Oct shows what level students started the year at. DRA Jan indicates what they tested at in the beginning of January. The 'Currently' column shows what level students were reading as of the middle of March in my classroom. Tutoring started at the beginning of February. This data shows students have been making significant growth as a result of the the additional support they are receiving during tutoring.
This document is a transcript taken during a student support meeting. The parent enthusiastically describes the impact she has seen tutoring have not only on her son's academic performance, but also on his confidence. This shows that students are taking advantage of the opportunity and it has positively impacted their growth as a student.
This parent responded to my ClassDojo message inviting their child to participate with enthusiasm and excitement for the program. This shows that students are taking advantage of the opportunity and that their family recognizes the importance of additional learning opportunities.
This video shows one of the student participants explaining why he enjoys staying after school. He explains that we work on reading and sight words as a way to become stronger readers. This shows students recognize their areas of growth and are taking advantage of the opportunity to participate in extended learning.
The after school tutoring program I started has helped my students continue their learning and develop their reading skills. Students were able to take advantage of this opportunity and saw the impact it had on their learning. As students become more proficient readers and more effective writers, they can use these skills to continue to advocate for themselves and others. These skills will continue to open doors for students throughout their education and after they have graduated.