  |
Inspire Supporting Literacy Through Volunteer TutoringBy Deborah P. Berrill, PhD As part of the Trent B.Ed. program, all teacher candidates take a course in Supporting Literacy and Learners with Special Needs. Aligned with that course is a reading tutoring program conducted in three school boards. Tutoring occurs twice weekly from September through December. During school hours, the children receive one-to-one tutoring by a B.Ed. candidate for forty-five minutes. A teacher in each school acts as a Reading Associate, matching children and tutors, finding locations in the school for the tutoring, and organizing and monitoring the tutoring. Selection of children to be tutored Children to be tutored are selected by the school and parents must give consent before a child can participate in the program. Criteria for selection include that the children are reading at Level 2 on the provincial scale and that they are in grade two or three. The program does not accept children with global delays and schools are asked to select those children whom they feel will benefit most. Thus, children who have a high record of absenteeism, for instance, are not selected for they would miss many of the tutoring sessions. Tutor preparation Tutors conduct initial inventories of the children to create a profile that includes the child's learning style preferences, areas of interest, areas of strength and areas of learning needs. The Reading Associate gives them the reading level of each child, usually based on school administered PM Benchmark achievement, and tutors conduct informal reading assessments on letter knowledge, sound-letter correspondence, and sight word knowledge. Tutors then use the combination of reading, learning style and interest information to structure their tutoring plans for each child. Tutors are prepared for the tutoring through introduction to theory and practice regarding the above assessment and learning profile measures. On Friday of the first week of B.Ed. classes, the teacher candidates participate in a Reading Conference. During the first month tutors are also introduced to various theoretical approaches to reading instruction and the importance of pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading activities to support success. These include, for instance, activating prior knowledge and predicting what a text might be about before beginning to read the text. Tutors follow a prescriptive template in structuring their individualized tutoring sessions. The tutoring session always begins with talking about events in each other's lives since the last session and is followed by a reading experience that will be successful for the child – either re-reading a text or reading a new text at the child's independent reading level. The rest of the session focuses on reading at the instructional level with before, during and after reading activities, a word study activity and a writing activity. Learning through relationship Tutors and children quickly establish strong relationships. As one tutor recently wrote, "It's all about RELATING to them.. getting into their world, and showing you CARE about that world, and about them - GENUINELY care." The children know that the tutors genuinely care. They learn to trust their tutors and therefore they become willing take risks in their reading, trying things that have been very difficult and unsuccessful in the past. Tutors work with each child to find approaches that use the child's learning style preferences and multiple intelligences. Tutors and children laugh together and have fun with words, celebrating successes, no matter how small. This in turn, supports the hard work that also occurs in each tutoring session. Three things promote learning: the desire of the children to learn to read; tutors' commitment to finding approaches that will work for the children they are tutoring; and the genuine caring for each child that exists in the tutoring relationship. More specifically: What does the research tell us? Research we have conducted with this reading tutoring program has focused on how involvement in the program builds capacity of teacher candidates as literacy instructors. We found significant positive differences pre- and post-tutoring in generating correct definitions for the following concepts:
From these measures, we know that teacher candidates will enter their first year of teaching with an understanding of deep concepts related to supporting the reading development of children who reading below grade level. Our research also shows that tutors gained knowledge in specific approaches they could use in reading instruction for these children. For instance, significant differences were found in the following visual approaches:
Significant differences were also apparent after the tutoring experience regarding characteristics of children with learning disabilities and teaching strategies tutors could use to address the specific special needs of the children they were tutoring. Tutors initially constructed the challenges associated with children who are reading below grade level as being due to the child's lack of motivation and desire. After their tutoring experiences, they attributed lower reading achievement to learning disabilities and factors beyond the control of the child. Entering the teaching profession with this new understanding will make a profound difference to their approach to children who are not achieving at grade level. Clearly, through their involvement as tutors teacher candidates learn a great deal about reading instruction and children with special needs both theoretically and in practical application. Our present research focuses on what the children learn and develop through their involvement in the reading tutoring program. Wider application: Recruit and retain volunteer tutors This research supports the idea that schools should recruit community volunteers for tutoring children reading below grade level. These volunteers need training and support in their initial years, but retention of them year over year would build a strong cadre of support for children in our schools. As a society, we have never before had such a large cadre of highly educated retirees – and that number will grow in upcoming years. Our children and youth need the positive relationship that tutoring brings and the learning benefits of working continuously over time with one person devoted completely to them. The invitation is ours to make. This program was created in partnership with the Faculty of Education at Trent University and The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat. |
Research at Trent University shows that use of trained volunteer tutors can provide an additional strong support for children who are reading below grade level expectations.