I’m excited to announce that I have just officially opened up a Get Started in 7 Tutoring Package. You can find out more at Ontario reading tutor, or go to phonicsrulesforkids.com and click the ‘Tutor’ tab. Book your first of seven 25-minute tutoring sessions with an experienced Ontario reading tutor!
Today, I’m going to walk you through what getting started in teaching your child to read with 7 tutoring sessions with me, Melanie here, as your child’s reading tutor would look like.
Ontario Reading Tutor
Tutoring Sessions will be Personalized for your child. How will I accomplish this? How will I know where your child needs to begin? As an Ontario reading tutor, I begin with a baseline reading assessment. If your child can already read CVC words like dog, him, pit, and also with the added phoneme /s/ at the end, I will note that using kid-friendly checklists in the first tutoring session with your child. This will be a series of simple checklist that I will complete in a kid-friendly way, with large letters, large words by me screen-sharing on Zoom.
I’ll ask your child to say ‘pass’, or I’ll just say, “Let’s try the next letter/word or phonics skill” if it’s clear that this would be the next step for your child’s phonics instruction. I won’t ask your son or daughter to continue attempting to read words they don’t know, because I want your kiddo to feel great about reading and working with me. We’ll simply pause, and move onto another activity in the initial assessment.
There will be a ‘high touch’ connection via communication. Meaning that after the baseline reading assessment, I will send you a checklist of which alphabetic and simple phonics skills your child is already demonstrating with success. I will share with you FREE resources you can print to review with your child that review the exact phonics and decoding reading skill we have focused on for each 25-minute tutoring session.
Kid-friendly. I am used to interacting with little learners. I taught K-2 for 10+ years. On the Calendly booking page, I believe I have 7 questions there for you as a mom to answer. One question is about something in which your child is interested. This is something I can ask your child about as an ice-breaker when we meet. Kids usually have no problem sharing a bit about a favourite activity, such as a favourite sport, if they like to bake, they help feed chickens, etc…
Also, if I sense your child needs a movement break during our 25-minute phonics session (they’ll likely need one or two), I’ll ask them to get up off the chair and hop/run on the spot for 30 seconds before continuing with modeling and practicing our target phonics skills for that tutoring lesson.
Reading Results focused. My goal for your child during our 7-25 minute tutoring sessions, is to successfully read simple text, based on the phonics skills I’ve modeled and practiced with your son or daughter. I get excited when kids can decode the next word, then a whole sentence, because they know how to apply their knowledge of phonics to do so.
No long-term commitment on your part. Don’t want or can’t commit to months of tutoring at a time? No problem. That’s why I’ve created Get Started Teaching Your Child to Read in 7 tutoring sessions. Pay when you book the first session using the Calendly app. After our first session together, I’ll send you the link to book your next 6 sessions without payment, because you’ve already paid up front. Ideally, you’d book 2 tutoring sessions each week for your child to kick start the reading process. You can get started with an Ontario reading tutor in just 7 sessions!
No fluff, no online games. I always believe it’s good practice to have your child in an open, public space in your home, such as the kitchen or living room, where you are nearby if needed to help with something tech related – their headphones for example.
Which curriculum do you use? I use the UFLI Foundations curriculum. I’m a former Canadian teacher who used UFLI, yes, an amazing American K-2 phonics curriculum in her classroom! This phonics curriculum for teaching children to read has been endorsed by many school boards in both Canada and the United States as the MUST DO method for K-2 classroom phonics instruction. It is a fast-paced, no fluff phonics curriculum that works for children ages 4-9.
As a former classroom teacher who looked at the success rate data of young students learning to read and spell, experience tells me this simple, yet comprehensive phonics program works. This is the phonics curriculum I’ll use to get you and your child Started Reading in 7 tutoring sessions with me online.
