Tutoring Services for Elementary Students
Content Tutoring: We provide tutoring for both standard and specialized subjects. Our goal is to help all learners cultivate the knowledge, skills, and confidence to achieve their goals.
Executive Function Tutoring: Tutors teach skills related to response inhibition, working memory, emotional control, flexibility, sustained attention, and task initiation. Executive function skills help people manage their time, stay organized, and complete tasks efficiently, enhancing their academic performance and overall well-being.
Standardized Test Prep: For exams like the ISEE or the SSAT, we provide comprehensive testing strategies, including study skills, time management, organization, and practices for alleviating test anxiety. Each session is tailored to the individual student's needs, with the goal of fostering confidence in standardized testing.
Enrichment Tutoring: Through our individualized approach, we build upon existing knowledge and skills, inspiring curiosity and a love of learning. Students are guided by tutors to delve into specialized and/or advanced topics, personalized projects, and more. Like a customizable camp, this is a great option for summer!
Elementary Student Skill Support
Reading:
We tailor instruction to meet the individual needs of each student, providing support for struggling readers and challenges for advanced readers.
● Phonics: Bridges the gap between letters and sounds. Our tutors cultivate phonemic awareness by teaching and practicing concepts such as "silent e," vowel teams, and consonant blends, building the reader’s phonics toolbox so they can confidently decode words.
● Sight Words: High-frequency words that don’t always play by phonetic rules. Our tutors help students learn to automatically recognize and read these words, increasing confidence and fluency.
● Fluency: Denotes reading smoothly, with expression and at an appropriate pace. Tutors personalize reading material to the student’s level, model fluent reading, and encourage students to read aloud and apply all the skills they’ve learned!
● Reading Comprehension: Comprises strategies for understanding what we read—making Connections, visualizing, questioning, and summarizing. These skills transform reading from a chore into an adventure, where characters come alive, and plots unfold.
● Promoting a Love for Reading: The ultimate goal - our tutors aim to foster positivity towards reading by exploring a variety of genres and topics that align with student interests. We encourage independent reading for pleasure and provide recommendations for books that students may enjoy.
Writing:
Our tutors guide students through the writing process of brainstorming, organizing, and crafting compelling essays, as well as encouraging creativity by engaging in imaginative, interest-based writing activities. Whether it's a persuasive piece or a personal reflection, Liddane ensures student voices shine.
● Brainstorming and Planning: Using graphic organizers like webs or outlines to help students organize their thoughts and structure their writing before they begin drafting.
● Writing Prompts: Help spark students' creativity and give them a starting point for writing. Prompts may be related to personal experiences, literature, or current events.
● Writing Conventions: Include grammar, punctuation, and spelling rules to help students communicate clearly. Editing and proofreading skills are emphasized to polish their writing.
● Genre Study: Allows students to explore a variety of forms, from expository essays to poetry. Each genre has its own structure and features, which students learn through analysis and practice.
● Voice and Style: Reflects the author's personality and perspective; we encourage students to develop their unique voice and writing style.
● Revision and Rewriting: Involves rethinking ideas, clarifying language, and making improvements.
● Reflection: Helps students set goals and identify areas for improvement in their writing.
Math:
Whether it's support with multiplication tables, geometry, or word problems, we ensure that young mathematicians stay sharp and keep their math anxiety at bay. We offer personalized attention, nurturing relationships, and a commitment to lifelong learning.
● Hands-on Manipulatives: Like blocks, counters, dice, and shapes help students visualize mathematical concepts. Manipulatives make abstract ideas concrete and promote understanding.
● Real-World Application: Connects math to everyday situations. Students solve problems related to shopping, cooking, and measuring to see math in action.
● Number Sense: The critical foundation of understanding numbers and their relationships. Students learn about place value, number patterns, and comparing quantities.
● Basic Operations: Involves teaching addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division using various strategies and techniques.
● Problem-Solving Skills: Include guess and check, drawing a picture, and making a table. Students learn to approach math problems systematically and persist in finding solutions.
● Math Vocabulary: Like sum, difference, product, and quotient are introduced and reinforced, so that students can fully understand and solve problems.
Executive Function:
Executive Function (EF) skills are the cognitive processes essential to accomplishing tasks/goals and self-regulation. By working on the following EF skills (and more) during tutoring, students can develop strategies to improve their academic performance and overall effectiveness in managing their personal and school-related tasks.
● Response Inhibition: The capacity to think before you act. This ability to resist the urge to say or do something allows us the time to evaluate a situation and how our behavior might impact it.
● Working Memory: The ability to hold information in memory while performing complex tasks. It incorporates the ability to draw on past learning or experience to apply to the situation at hand or to project into the future.
● Emotional Control: The ability to manage emotions in order to achieve goals, complete tasks, or control and direct behavior.
● Flexibility: The ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles, setbacks, new information or mistakes. It relates to an adaptability to changing conditions.
● Sustained Attention: The capacity to maintain attention to a situation or task in spite of distractibility, fatigue, or boredom.
● Task Initiation: The ability to begin projects without undue procrastination, in an efficient or timely fashion.