As students move through Elementary school, they’ll become more reliant on their literacy skills. Starting in 5th grade, many students are beginning to read chapter books featuring more complex topics. As families begin formulating a plan for their child through middle and high school, literacy becomes a point of discussion. In middle school, students begin to have more and more autonomy in the way they learn. While this is beneficial, many students can fall behind quickly if they lack these fundamental literacy skills. So how do we prevent this? Well one of the ways is with a reading tutor!
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What is Literacy?
literacytrust.org.uk defines literacy as:
The word literacy is defined as the ability to read, write, speak and listen in a way that lets us communicate effectively and make sense of the world.
As mentioned previously, teachers begin incorporating more complex literacy techniques in middle school. This is especially troublesome for students who may have a delay in literacy learning. This can be due to environmental factors like the size of the classroom, instruction style, etc. It’s necessary to mention that there are other factors outside of the environment that can also affect a student’s literacy. Certain learning disabilities can affect literacy such as: dyslexia, speech disorders, ADHD, visual disorders, etc. While I will talk about the benefits of a reading tutor for literacy in a student, students with learning disabilities may benefit from more specialized help.
The Benefits of a Reading Tutor
Now that we’ve defined literacy, you can probably assume why a reading tutor can help with literacy issues.
1. Preventing Literacy Problems
To maximize the benefit of a reading tutor, I highly recommend you schedule one in a preventative sense. What do I mean by this? Even if your student is not currently struggling with their literacy, it’s a good idea to schedule a reading tutor anyways. While teachers lay the foundation for literacy in a student, a reading tutor reinforces and strengthens that foundation. A tutor is better able to identify a student’s weakness in a subject like reading literacy, catching problems before they become even bigger problems.
2. More Reading Attention
A reading tutor is better equipped to give the student more individualized attention. If your student is attending a school with larger classrooms, chances are they are at risk of ‘falling through the cracks’. In these larger classrooms, teachers are unable to give each student the individual attention they may need to be set up for success. For many students this may present a decline in reading literacy which can later snowball into executive functioning deficits. A tutor can prevent this slide from happening by giving their student more individualized reading attention.
3. Encourages Students to Stay Engaged
This relates nicely with our previous benefit. Tutors will encourage students to stay engaged with the content their covering. This is through the encouragement of asking questions, and building a study routine around a student’s strengths. For a student who doesn’t enjoy reading, a tutor can help them explore new ways to approach reading materials. Maybe they don’t like a specific genre? A tutor can identify and encourage students to branch out in a subject that interests them.
What Are You Waiting For, Try a Tutor!
I hope I was able to highlight some of the benefits of getting a private tutor. If you’re convinced I highly recommend checking out our highly qualified tutors here at TenneyTutors. There’s never been a more perfect time with our free first session. (available below the article) If you want to try an individualized tutoring environment to see if it works for your student, fill out the form below! All of our tutors are professional, one-to-one private school teachers at our one-to-one school: The Tenney School.