Tutoring Assessment & Instruction

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Our focus is helping children who need additional support when reading and/or writing. Working collaboratively with parents, teachers, school administrators, and Clinic faculty, tutors and coaches assess each child’s strengths and needs, and then implement appropriate research-based interventions. Children who participate have many different learning profiles. Some struggle just a bit, while others experience severe reading or writing difficulty. Some are diagnosed as having specific special education needs, while others are not eligible in their respective schools for special support services in reading and writing. Some do reasonably well in reading, but struggle in writing.

The faculty and tutors at the UW Literacy Research Center and Clinic are educators committed to continually improving their practice. They read and discuss current research and theory related to reading and writing development, as well as effective teaching practices. They seek not only to understand methodology, but also the research and theory behind the methodology. Tutors at the UW Literacy Research Center and Clinic work under the direct supervision of University of Wyoming faculty to deepen their understanding of research-based assessment and instructional practices within the domains of literacy through discussion and shared inquiry, participate and engage in ongoing research projects, and engaged in weekly planning of targeted instruction aimed at working within children’s abiding interests while accelerating their learning gains. To this end, all tutoring sessions are video-recorded for teacher reflection, as well as for analysis of our instructional approaches.

Working collaboratively with the UW Literacy Research Center and Clinic faculty, tutors assess each child and implement personalized instruction within a one-on-one or small-group setting. The UW Literacy Research Center and Clinic staff will also work collaboratively with schools and families to build congruence between the work in the program and the instruction that occurs in the child’s regular classroom.

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Assessment

Working collaboratively with UW Literacy Research Center and Clinic faculty, tutors will administer evidence-based assessments in word study, vocabulary, comprehension, writing, and fluency to determine the learning profiles of the children with whom they work. Selection of assessments will be based on the needs of individual children. Results will be reported to parents/guardians through the student’s end-of-semester report. These results will also be kept on file in the center as part of the child’s ongoing assessment portfolio.

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Instruction

During each tutoring session, tutors will plan and maintain a tutoring log detailing the reading and writing activities specifically tailored to the needs and interests of the child. Activities during each session will address each of the literacy domains: word study (phonemic awareness and phonics), fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, and writing (composition and spelling). In addition, particular focus will be placed on teaching students how to become critical readers of web-based materials and other multimodal sources (e.g., visual arts). Based on the observations each day, tutors plan the next week’s activities and make any adjustments necessary to meet the evolving needs of the children. These logs will be kept on file in the Clinic as part of the child’s ongoing learning-assessment portfolio.