FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS BY PARENTS


1. Who is the director of the reading clinic?

Dr. Timothy Houge directs the reading clinic. He has a Doctorate Degree in reading from University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He was an elementary school teacher for ten years and a reading specialist for two years before coming to Northern State University in the summer of 2000.

Dr. Houge's duties, as a director, include providing an extensive reading/writing methodology instruction for the undergraduates who serve as tutors in the reading clinic. He also supervises, reads their lesson plans prior to instruction, and evaluates their implementation of instructional techniques.

2. What services does the clinic provide?

Prior to instruction, all of the children are administered an informal reading assessment to determine word recognition and comprehension strengths and weaknesses. The results of these tests are used to find the child's reading and writing level.

Each child is assigned to one tutor. The tutor, under the observation of Dr. Houge, maps out a tentative course of instruction. The tutor constantly monitors progress and adjusts instruction as needed. Instruction typically focuses around easy reading, phonetic instruction, oral guided reading, writing, and reading aloud.

3. Do parents receive a report of their child's progress?

During the midpoint of the semester, parental conferences are held to report progress and make recommendations for future growth. The parental conference is followed with a written report that is sent to the home address after all instruction is completed. It provides a description of the reading/writing diagnosis, instruction, and recommendations.

4. How old does the child have to be?

We work with children in grades K-12.

5. Do the children need to have reading difficulties?

Any child that parents feel will benefit from our program is welcome. This means that if your child is reading above, at, or below grade level they may attend our clinic. We believe that if the parents feel the school is not challenging their child, who is reading above grade level, then by all means bring them to the clinic to receive instruction that will be at their level of reading. We also believe that children who are reading and writing at grade level deserve the opportunity to receive one-to-one tutoring in the reading clinic so as to assure their level of reading and writing or move them ahead. Finally, those children reading and writing below grade level are welcome to attend the reading clinic so as to receive one-to-one instruction in reading and writing.

6. What type of instruction occurs during each tutoring session?

For one hour a tutor will be using a variety of instructional activities while tutoring your child. Depending on the age of your child the activities will be longer or shorter.  For example, the tutor will be doing more activities for shorter periods of time when working with a kindergarten child as compared to working with a sixth grade child.  All of the tutors are directed to follow a five step instructional plan that can easily be transferred to the classroom when they become a licensed teacher.  Four of these specific components need to be implemented in order to assure that effective literacy instruction is being delivered your child.  Three of these components stem from evidence-based practices that most recently Sousa (2005) defined as two major processes—decoding and comprehension.  According to Sousa, phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency are elements of decoding whereas comprehension demands a development of vocabulary, interaction with text, and a superiorly trained teacher who has the skills to advance a child’s aptitude for understanding the text.

Fluency
The type of fluency instruction or practice implemented depends on the age of your child.  For example, children who are reading short simplistic literature books are simply asked to reread the book two times in order to provide them practice reading text with speed and accuracy as well as with proper expression.  This practice follows the National Institute for Literacy’s (2001) recommendation for maintaining and advancing children’s wording recognition, speed, accuracy, and fluency in addition to improving comprehension.  However, for those students who are reading lengthier textbooks a variation of the process of repeated reading (Samuals, 1979) is implemented.  This entails having the tutor ask the children to reread a particular number of words (depending on their age and grade level the number of words are more or less).  For example, a fifth grade child should be required to read approximately 160 words per minute (wpm).  In order to obtain this level of fluency the tutor records the amount of time that is needed for your child to read a predetermined passage of words.  This process is completed three times.  If your child does not reach the wpm goal the process is repeated at the beginning of the next instructional session with another passage until the goal is met.

Vocabulary Instruction
Approximately 15 to 20 minutes of each tutoring session is devoted to vocabulary instruction that entails instructing in a speech-to-print format as described by Moats (2001). This instruction is designed to increase your child’s spelling abilities and to advance their reading skills.  Ultimately, our tutors will implement a "Sound" approach to teaching reading: The Objective Route: "Visual" to "Sound" to "Meaning" - Two stops to "Meaning."

The Reading Triangle
Two Perceptual Routes to Meaning


Please click here to view a powerpoint with more information on "The Reading Triangle."

Potter, D. (2003). Reading Triangle. Retrieved November 29, 2006, from www.donpotter.net/ed.htm.

Potter, D. (2005).  Reading Triangle Power Point.  Retrieved November 29, 2006, from www.donpotter.net/ed.htm.

Your child does not automatically acquire the practice of sounding a word out if they are not taught how and provided with adequate practice.  Consequently they learn to depend on pictures or context to decode unfamiliar words.  Therefore it is pertinent that we teach the association between sound and letter(s) and provide your child with plenty of practice constructing words with letters they know.

Our program begins with a restricted set of sound-symbol correlations (5 or 6 consonants such as b, f, h, j, k, m, p, t) and one or two short vowels such as a and i with the intention of having your child build words very early in their reading instruction.  Throughout the semester more consonants and vowels are included with those that your child already knows.  Exercises that have your child divide words into phonemes and blending them back to wholes are meant to reinforce the habit of sounding out a word. For example, your child will be asked to change one sound in a word to make a new word (rat, mat, fit, hit, hid, had, mad).  Thus, maintaining a systematic, explicit decoding instructional environment that encourages blending single sounds into words.

During the next stage of reading instruction your child is asked to decode simple words and predictable syllables inside of longer words.  Phonograms such as  ack, ake, uck, ell and word endings such as –ing, -ed, -est, began to be read as a single units rather than individual sounds.

When working with advanced students, the vocabulary instruction, to a large extent, involves teaching them the six types of syllables and how to use their knowledge of syllables to break words apart while reading and writing. This polysyllabic word study is designed and modeled after Greene’s (2004) research validated program LANGUAGE! and Archer, Gleason, and Vachon’s (2000) research validated program Rewards. Because the brain learns through patterns and numerous examples (Sousa, 2005), the tutors are instructed to provide instruction on a syllable type, have the adolescents accurately spell (and, in some cases read) monosyllabic words that contain this syllable structure, and then advance to using polysyllabic words that contain the same syllable type.

Very little time is spent teaching syllabication rules; instead, tutors provide an exposure to the orthographic patterns in our English language where flexibility is strongly stressed (Archer, Gleason, & Vachon, 2003; Cunningham, 1998; Shefelbine, 1990).   In other words, your child will be taught to see the syllables in the words as they attempt to make correct pronunciations. If initial attempts at pronouncing a polysyllabic word do not match any word in their oral language, they are encouraged to change their division of the word so as to establish an alternate pronunciation that matches their oral vocabulary or, instead, a pronunciation that appears to make the most sense to them. 

In addition, as a means to reinforce syllabication, instruction may include morphemic analysis. The tutors, again, are instructed to teach using a “word family approach” when introducing a particular morpheme (Gunning, 2006). For example, the root aud means “hearing” and -ible is the Latin suffix meaning “capable of”; therefore, audible means “capable of being heard.” Following this study of the word audible, your child will begin to understand that the meaning of the root aud involves hearing; therefore, they become better at predicting the meanings of related words such as audience, auditorium, audition, audiology/audiologist, and audiometer.

Immediately following vocabulary instruction students are asked to write two sentences dictated to them containing words they have just studied.  For example for those students in the initial stage of learning to read the tutor may dictate /The rat hit a mad cat./ or for our older students the sentence may be /The child was audible for the audition in front of the audience in front of the auditorium./.  Each sentence is read to your child two times before the they are allowed to begin writing.  If your child needs the sentence repeated after they begin writing the tutor may repeat the whole sentence but does not provide a particular word.  All of the dictation is spoken at a normal speed. 

The purpose of this activity is to take a phonetic skill such as short vowel /a/ or the morpheme /aud/ that was taught out of context and put it back into context.  Furthermore, it reinforces spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar and handwriting as well as providing training in listening to, writing, and then reading useful vocabulary in complete sentences.  And, finally, this dictation opportunity allows your child to proofread since they will be asked to reread the sentence after they have completed the writing to check for errors. 

Guided Reading
In order to enhance comprehension with authentic text, instruction in the form of guided reading is completed.  During this instructional practice (generally lasting 15 to 20 minutes), tutors use questions about the literature selection to guide and monitor your child’s progress. This question-and-answer instruction is designed to enhance your child’s ability to respond to questions in a more advanced fashion and, consequently, improve their ability to learn as they read. For example, during guided reading, your child will be asked to look in the text to find answers to questions they could not answer after an initial reading. This process is designed to help your child determine a purpose for their reading, focus their attention on what they want to learn, monitor their comprehension, evaluate content, and relate what they learned to what they already know.

This type of direct, explicit comprehension instruction is a form of scaffolding that provides some structure and supports your child in their efforts to comprehend text (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004). The added instruction in the form of implicit and explicit text questions brings children to a level at which they are challenged, without being frustrated, by exposure to this new level of comprehension; Vygotsky (1978) referred to this as the zone of proximal development.


Writing
In order to maintain an ongoing record of your child’s knowledge of the English language as well as their spelling knowledge as applied in real context, time needs to be set aside to allow your child to write.  These writing samples are analyzed to determine your child’s spelling strengths and weaknesses and provide profiles of what your child is doing well in their writing and what areas need to be addressed during vocabulary instruction.  Every child from the emergent to advance speller is asked to write, which ise edited so as to not allow your child to continue misspelling particular words.  This writing time is uncontrolled and unstructured or the tutor may ask your child to respond to the guided reading book or the read aloud book in whatever way they wish.  However, depending on your child, it may be entirely tutor-directed and turor-structured, as in an assignment to summarize a particular reading selection.

Reading Aloud
A fifth component of literacy instruction consist of reading aloud from a book that is too hard for your child to read and understand but easy enough for them to listen to and comprehend.  Listening to and talking about books on a regular basis provides your child with demonstrations of the benefits and pleasures of reading.  Story reading introduces your child to new words, new sentences, new places, and new ideas.  Reading aloud to your child every tutoring session, and talking about books and stories, supports and extends oral language development and helps your child connect oral to written language.  Furthermore, discussions regarding characters or events, predicting events, creating a connection between events or characters in the story and events and people in your child’s life, as well as talking about words and their meanings, summarizing sections of the story, and evaluating the story is meant to develop an understanding and love of reading.

References

Bear, D., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2003). Words their way (3rd Ed.). Washington D.C. :  Prentice Hall.

Brody, S. (2001). Teaching Reading Language, Letters & Thought (2nd Ed.). Milford , New Hampshire : LARC Publishing.

Cunningham, P. (2000). Phonics They Use: Words for Reading and Writing (3rd Ed.). Boston ; Allyn and Bacon.

Flynt, S., Cooter, R. (2004). Reading inventory for the classroom (5th Ed.). Upper Saddle River , New Jersey : Pearson Prentice Hall.

Fry, E.B., Kress., J. E., Fountoukidis, D.L. (2000). The reading teacher’s book of lists (4th Ed.). San Francisco , California : Jossy-Bass.

Ganske, K. (2000). Word journeys. New York , New York : The Gulliford Press.

Moats, L. (2000).  Speech to print. Baltimore , Maryland : Paul H. Brooks Publishing.

Samuels, J. (1979). The method of repeated readings. The Reading teacher, (403-408)

Shaywitz, S. (2003). Overcoming dyslexia. New York , New York : Alfred A. Knopf.

Sousa, D. (2005). How the brain learns to read. Thousand Oaks , California : Corwin Press.

Archer, A. L., Gleason, M. M., & Vachon, V. L. (2000). REWARDS Reading excellence: Word attack and rate development strategies.   Longmont , CO : Sopris West.

Archer, A. L., Gleason, M. M., & Vachon, V. L. (2003). Decoding and fluency: Foundation skills for struggling older readers. Learning Disability Quarterly, 26, 89-101.

Biancarosa, G., & Snow, C. (2004). Reading next: A vision for action and research in middle and high school literacy -- A report to  Carnegie Corporation of New York . Washington , DC : Alliance for Excellent Education.

Greene, J. F. (2004). Language! A literacy intervention curriculum. Longmont , CO : Sopris West.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind and society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge , MA : MIT.

COMMENTS FROM PARENTS

Recent Comments:

  • Tutoring has been an excellent experience for my child.
  • Erin is my son’s tutor.  My son made great progress with her.  We both enjoyed her time with my son.  He loves to read on his own finally.  I believe the program has helped my kids out so much.
  • The tutor was very good.  She was patient and encouraged my son to do his best.
  • We are so grateful to have the Reading Clinic at NSU as an option to jump start and develop our son’s reading skills.  During the Fall 2007 session, our son’s skills were considerably behind grade level.  During the Spring 2008 session he has progressed to reaching his own grade level.  We still have work to do in order to master reading and become more secure in the skills he is learning, but overall his progress has been wonderful.  I attribute the one-on-one tutoring to much of his success, as well as the fact that we brought him to the Reading Clinic as a first grader instead of waiting.   Thank you for your dedicated service to my child and reading!
  • She has really enjoyed the Clinic and her teacher.  I think she has gained confidence in her reading and is reading a lot more on her own.  Thanks!!
  • I will recommend your clinic to other parents.
  • Reading Clinic has not added to our increased reading ability but Reading Clinic has added to our reading desire.
  • We have seen great progress in our child’s reading skills.  Keep up the good work!
  • This was my son’s first session so I feel it was too short of a time to see a lot of improvement.  I am hoping to enroll him again next year.  He still does not enjoy reading and thought the books were too hard.  I hope that will change.
  • Very good program – thanks.
  • Very good – thanks.
  • Thank you for your help with Ryan Rogers.  His tutor was excellent!!
  • Our son likes to read, but school was not challenging him, so he was bored and starting to act out.  The reading clinic challenges him at his pace and he enjoys learning. We will be continuing with this program.  Thank you.

  • Tutoring has been an excellent experience for my child.

  • Good experience for my child.

  • Our family very much appreciates the time and effort that this student took to assist our child.  He was very comfortable and had a positive experience.  Thank you.

  • I am very excited about the progress my child made in the program.  I am sure it will provide benefit to his schoolwork for years to come.  An anecdotal comment is this—prior to starting the program there was not, according to my son, a single book in the library which interested him.  However, towards the end of the program he remarked several times that he hoped his tutor would not be upset that he was so far ahead in reading the book because it was “so good.”  Music to my ears!  Thank you!

  • This program gave Emily important one-to-one she couldn’t have gotten at school. Thank you for providing this excellent service for the community

Past Comments:

  • Sarah is our tutor and she has been just wonderful. I wish I knew the magic she uses, because our son used to hate reading, now he even admitted he "likes to read." I am so pleased, I get tears in my eyes to see the progress he has made, especially with his confidence. That was one of his major problems, he thought he couldn't do it. Now he knows he can, and he is so much more confident when he reads. I am so proud and so pleased with the job Sarah has done. Thank you so much.
  • My child's teacher has been wonderful!
  • My grandson would not read very much until he started the classes. He likes to read all the time now. I am very pleased with the young people that take their time to work with the kids. Thanks.
  • Keep up the great work!
  • I am very pleased with the progress of my two children in the reading clinic. Since they were both reading above level, my main motivation for enrolling them was to add another dimension of learning and increase their motivation to continue to excel. Both tutors were very interested in individualizing my kids' programs to fit their interests. Thank you very much.
  • Thank you for your time in preparing the material needed for each child's needs. I see improvement every week in my son's reading and an improved interest for reading. Thanks again for your help.
  • Wonderful experience for tutors and children.
  • We appreciated the communication between home and the tutoring program.
  • My child enjoyed the clinic. I was having trouble getting him to read daily. He doesn't mind doing it at the clinic. There hasn't been one day that he said he didn't want to go.
  • I really feel your reading clinic has helped our child stay on track over the summer. I feel he will go to school this fall with a fresh mind and get back into school work faster.
  • Thanks for your dedication to my daughter.
  • Our child's tutor was an excellent instructor. I must commend her and the reading clinic for accommodating my son's schedule. He has really gained a lot this semester. I thank you!
  • The tutor did a wonderful job and my son mention many times how much he liked her and how he enjoyed reading with her.
  • I am very pleased with my son's tutor. She has developed a rapport with him and he thoroughly enjoys his sessions with her. He has not complained about attending any of the sessions and he as willingly read his books to me each evening. I would recommend your program to parents and would like to possibly take advantage of your program again.
  • My daughter really enjoyed the reading clinic and her tutor.
  • Great resource for parents.
  • I'm very thankful for your clinic!
  • Bringing my son to these sessions helped him and he'll sit a little longer so I can also help him. Thanks!
  • Since my son has had this tutoring his reading level and grades have improved tremendously. Thank you!
  • My daughter loves to learn and her tutor encouraged her to continue. Her tutor is very positive and upbeat and shows a genuine concern for my daughter to succeed.
  • My daughter is excited about reading and wishes she had "class" every night.
  • The tutor did an excellent job! My son really liked her and advanced a whole grade level. You improved his self-image and his enjoyment in school. Thank you!
  • My daughter seems to enjoy the reading clinic. She is comfortable with her tutor and talks highly of her. My daughter has brought books home and has read them on her own without me telling her. That's a positive improvement. I think this is a good program and hope it continues in the future.
  • My tutor is great! She never watches the clock and our son is able to have her undirected attention for a full hour. We are very pleased with the reading program and can't wait for the next semester. Our son is gaining confidence. Thanks!
  • Thanks! Please offer the reading clinic next semester also.
  • I am very happy with my daughter's progress. This is her first time at the reading clinic and within the month she picks out words that she has learned.
  • I felt our child has greatly improved in his reading. He seems to enjoy going to the clinic. I feel this is a great program and I hope it continues.
  • Our tutor answered many of my questions. She seemed well informed and excited about helping my son. She will make a great teacher. I hope that my son can continue with this program for the whole school year. It really has helped him to see reading is fun.
  • My daughter seems very enthusiastic to go to her tutoring class. She wants me to read to her. She is getting more involved with reading and the library at school. Overall this class has definitely encouraged her to want to learn. Thanks!
  • The one-on-one tutoring was really good for my child. His tutor provided a variety of methods to keep his interest.