We're In New Territory

Reading Skills Soar With High-Impact Tutoring 

 

Amy Coffey, M.Ed.

Freelance EdTech Marketing Writer

February 22, 2024

 

Introduction

As a nation, we are sailing into a storm. Today’s elementary school students are in grave danger of having their adult lives filled with an immense struggle due to a deficiency in reading ability. People who do not read critically lack the knowledge and awareness they need to think critically. Thus, they become sitting ducks for misinformation, progaganda, and being taken advantage of by people with nefarious intentions. 

High-impact, or high-dosage tutoring is defined as one-on-one tutoring for at least three 30-minute sessions per week. EducationWeek stated that 45% of the nation’s elementary schools offered high-impact tutoring; however, only 10% of students are engaged in the activity. 

President Biden, in his 2024 State of the Union Speech, endorsed high-impact tutoring “to see that every child learns to read by the third grade.” (K12Dive, 2024)

Tutoring has become a favorite option for parents who are concerned about their children's reading abilities. 

One-on-one tutoring helps poor readers fill in voids they have in letter-sound relationships, phonics, vocabulary and reading comprehension. In addition to tutoring, schools have recently adopted the Science of Reading approach to teaching reading skills. It is hoped that with these types of interventions, we can turn the tide and help our students significantly improve. 

This white paper will cover:

1. The deficient status of reading ability across the nation
2. How high-impact tutoring can help improve students’ reading skills
3. How you can implement high-impact reading into your schools

 

High-Impact Tutoring: the Secret to Success for Struggling Readers

At the start of first grade, Sam’s reading assessment revealed that he could only read six words per minute. While sitting with a group of classmates and listening to each one read aloud, Sam’s  sweaty hands clutched his book. When it was his turn, his queasy stomach distracted him from sounding out the first letter of the first word. One student in the group sighed. Two more down his row whispered and giggled. To his embarrassment, Sam’s teacher jumped in to help him say the words.

Flash forward to three months later: After high-impact one-on-one tutoring, Sam could read 64 words per minute. Sam soared into the stratosphere with amazing skills in reading comprehension, phonics, spelling, vocabulary, and grammar. Only after three months. What made the difference?

During that three-month period, Sam met with a qualified and experienced tutor for thirty minutes three times per week. He read from high-quality instructional materials that were backed by research for their scalability and diversity, and complemented his reading level. He was taught with attention to:

• phonemic awareness — the ability to work with sounds in speech 
• phonics —  defined as the sounds specific letters make 
• fluency in reading
• vocabulary development
• Reading comprehension

Sam’s progress was accurately tracked as a measure of the impact tutoring had on his reading ability. It showed how the tutoring program filled all the gaps in his literacy learning. 

Sam was saved from a bleak future of reading struggles that would have led to poor academic performance and poor self-worth. But Sam was not the only student in this situation. In fact, every school district in this country has a myriad of students in the same predicament. 

 

We’re in New Territory

Only one out of three fourth grade students today can read at a fourth grade level of proficiency. (2022, NAEP)

Today our students’ reading abilities teeter on a slim balance beam. With arms outstretched, teachers and parents are grasping for better ways to help struggling readers. They know that children who read poorly in the early school years only become further behind as they get older. Such students struggle with critical thinking skills: analysis, evaluation, comparing and contrasting, and “reading between the lines”. 

By the third grade, one in six struggling readers will not graduate from high school with their class. Often they are retained and graduate with younger classes. Of those who read at a basic level, as defined by NAEP,  23% of these students fail or drop out of high school. (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2013). 

The National Assessment of Education Progress, (NAEP), also known as “the nation’s report card”, tests students’ reading ability in the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades. Students’ scores range from 0 to 500 points, with 500 being a perfect score. Let’s take a look at the statistics. Each row of this chart lists the year of the score average, and each column shows us the score in points. 

Remember, the top score is 500. Scores are reported every two years. In the most recent report, 2022, we see that students’ reading abilities fell sharply below the half-mark. In March, 2022, the New York Times said, “It’s alarming; children are severely behind in reading…we’re in new territory.”

Additionally, the pandemic severely impacted our children’s reading education. With closed schools, unsupervised online learning, and the wearing of masks for two years, a third of our school children have fallen behind in their reading skills. (New York Times, 2022) One out of three. Students who were primary-grade children during the pandemic are now older, and still behind in reading. 

Furthermore, 21.6% of U.S. children do not speak English at home. Their exposure to English is confined to school, friends, and the media. Non-native English speakers are not exposed to as much vocabulary or conventions of the English language.

 

States and schools have recently put the Science of Reading into effect as part of their curricula to give students a proper reading foundation. The Science of Reading approach is based upon research into how our brains learn to read. It is a truly remarkable fact that we are born with 100 million brain cells, called neurons, that are ready to receive information externally via our senses. 

How do we read? In less than one-fifth of a second, the neurons in our brains can identifiy a letter string as a word. Next, they send that information to a part of the brain called the temporal lobe, where the letters are encoded with sound patterns. Then signals go to another part of the brain, the frontal lobe, where it receives meaning. This whole process happens between 150 and 200 milliseconds. 

 

“The brain simultaneously filters incoming words, recognizes certain letter combinations, compares and contrasts it to words similar in spelling and meaning. In fact, many processes occur at once when we read a sentence.” 

— Stanislas Dehaene, author of Reading and the Brain

Reading teachers who have adopted The Science of Reading embrace Stanislas Dehaene’s belief that:

“This process whereby written words are converted into strings of phonemes must be taught explicitly.”  

 

Three years after the pandemic, however,  teachers are overwhelmed with implementing and assessing this new method of teaching. Today’s children exhibit a wide range of skill gaps and learning styles. Thus, maintaining reading progress is a tall order for most teachers. 

“Beyond third grade, fewer teachers each year know how to help students

who are lacking foundational reading skills.”

— Elizabeth Albro, Executive, Institute of Educational Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

 

The Benefits of High-Impact Tutoring

Fortunately, there is help in the form of tutoring. Studies now show that high-impact tutoring for individual students or small groups of children have displayed incredible results. 

According to one massive study, Stanford University found that of 800 kindergartners studied, after one year of tutoring, 68% of these children could read simple three-letter words, versus 32% of the students who did not receive tutoring.

One-on-one tutoring provides readers with both academic and emotional support:

• Face to face interaction
• Less distraction
• Immediate feedback
• Expanding student knowledge base
• Increasing student confidence
• Finding joy in reading

When students and their tutors work closely together, students can best see the tutor’s mouth and face as he or she forms letter sounds and words. This was difficult to do when people in school had to wear masks during the pandemic. Young students needed to see how to form the “th” sound, for example. Nonverbal communication between the student and tutor personalizes the learning experience; e.g., encouragement by smiling at the student’s success. 

When in a room full of peers, young children are easily distracted. In today’s primary classroom, there could be as many as 10% of students displaying Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). These children not only have trouble concentrating on learning material themselves, but they also distract other students with their hyperactivity. However, in a tutoring session, the child is isolated with only his tutor and the learning material to focus his attention upon. 

In addition, during a reading class, the teacher is not likely to realize that certain students are mispronouncing or misinterpreting the words in their reading material. However, when a tutoring student reads to his tutor and makes a mistake, the tutor is there to catch it and correct right away. 

Having a variety of interesting texts to read during tutoring sessions widens the student’s knowledge base. For example, if a student reads about going to a beach, but has never been to a beach, he or she has not had hands-on experience with the sand, waves, and shells there. However, by reading about it and imagining it, the student can increase his base of knowledge regarding what it is like to be on a beach. 

Subsequently, the greatest benefits students receive from working with a reading tutor are self-confidence and joy. Students realize they CAN read, and they discover new worlds, cultures, and experiences by reading about them. 

 

Four Items to Consider When Seeking a Reading Tutor

• Quality of tutor training and experience
• Quality of materials used
• Number and length of sessions within a week
• Ability to track and monitor progress

Quality of the Tutor’s Training

Teachers in the United States are licensed by their state to teach after receiving a bachelor’s degree in education. Thus, it is preferable to have a tutor with at least a bachelor’s degree as well as significant experience in teaching. 

Quality of Materials Used

The first step for new tutoring students is to assess their reading abilities to determine where the learning gaps are. Following this assessment, qualified tutors will be most successful by using researched-based materials.

Number and Length of Weekly Sessions

High-impact tutoring occurs when students meet with their tutor 2-3 times per week for 30-minute sessions.

Tracking and Monitoring Success

A system of tracking and monitoring each student’s reading progress needs to be in place. All five pillars of literacy need to be met; phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. (2000 NICHD).

 

Discover BookHaven: A Proven Pathway to Success

BookHaven’s K-12 synchronous platform makes it simple to install a tutoring program in your school. Tailored delivery options are available to meet your school district’s needs. You can choose to receive their instructional materials and supply your own tutors, or you may choose to use their qualified tutors to meet with your students online. 

BookHaven’s advantages meet all the considerations on your list:

1. They offer highly trained professionals to engage your students 

2.  Their teaching materials are backed by research and proven success

3.  Sessions are made with each student for 30 minutes 2 - 3 times a week

4.  BookHaven’s impact measurement program reports accurate and timely data

On November 15, 2023, BookHaven shared the results of a study they conducted with Washington Public Schools in San Mateo, CA. Measured alongside the Every Students Succeeds Act of 2015, using Level I criteria (ESSA), their results illustrated the extraordinary success of BookHaven’s high-impact tutoring program. (bookhaven.com/press release)

“The reason I recommend BookHaven is the satisfaction I receive from watching students improve their literacy activities with practice. Ava’s (name changed) progress is a testimony to how BookHaven is changing lives. Her fluency has improved greatly. She smiles with excitement when it’s her turn to read, feeling more confident in her literacy abilities. The happiness radiating from her face after a BookHaven lesson says it all!”

ALEX BERTRAM, LITERACY SPECIALIST

Southern Westchester BOCES, NY

Summary

The best intervention for a struggling elementary school reader is a high-impact tutoring  program that uses scaled, high-quality teaching materials, and carefully tracks each student’s progress. By delivering a hassle-free implementation and excellent support, the synchronous platform offered with BookHaven will provide a data-driven impact upon your young readers. 

Executed with precision, using research-based materials, and delivered by qualified instructors practically guarantees success. 

 

Contact BookHaven for a demo. 

 

Spec Sample: White Paper