The average improvement for students finishing 40 tutoring sessions in either reading or math in our Academic Enrichment Program is 1.8 years. How is this possible? Do we have magic curriculum? Do our tutors know something classroom teacher don’t? Have we found a miracle way to have kids retain all they have learned?
Actually, the reason we are so successful with our students is we focus on three very important things: building confidence, individualized instruction and teaching specific skill strategies.
Most of our students come to us having struggled in school for a while. Even a first or second grader knows when they are behind and can start to give up. Our first task is to let each child know that they can be successful. We start students with materials they can do independently and then begin giving them tips and strategies to try new and more advanced work.
Each student has their own binder with materials chosen from over 10,000 lessons based on their areas needing improvement and our tutor to student ratio is 1:3. This is very intentional! We want our students to get individualized instruction; however, our job is to help each student become successful in the classroom, so we give them the tools they need to work independently.
Our reading and math programs are designed to find the specific gaps students have. If a student comes to us struggling with reading, we administer a comprehensive, diagnostic assessment that looks at phonics, sight words, vocabulary, fluency and four different areas of comprehension. We design a curriculum plan that focuses just on those areas that they need improvement. Our materials are very specific: from how to get the main idea from what you read to how to find the slope on a graph.
So, no magic and no miracles. Just caring, well-trained tutors, fantastic curriculum and a plan that really works!
