Innovative Tutoring
by Deborah Bown
Individualized Tutoring
with an Innovative Approach
FOUR RECOMMENDED CORE ASSESSMENTS
To help provide your child with a highly individualized tutoring approach, I like to begin with four unique assessments. These are designed to help determine possible reasons why your child might be struggling in a given area.
While I am not able to diagnose or fix possible identified areas of concerns, I can provide insights into your child’s learning struggles, recommend programs and resources that are known to address these suspected problems, and offer strategies that can help your child compensate for learning weaknesses.
The four recommended core assessments usually take about two hours to complete. Some children may require a second session to finish. It is best not to have your child assessed more than two hours at a time to ensure better and more accurate results.
Core Assessment Descriptions
(1) Brain Highways Screening
The Brain Highways screening consists of seven mini tasks helping to identify areas of the brain that may be underdeveloped. The areas screened are the pons, midbrain, vestibular, proprioception, eye tracking, eye teaming, and eye jump.
(2) Reading and Visualization Survey
This survey helps determine what your child sees when reading text and how well he/she visualizes. This survey is also used to collect information on what your child does when he/she is unable to decode a word or understand its meaning.
(3) Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI)
QRI gauges your child’s reading ability and helps determine reading level, fluency and comprehension. The inventory also clarifies the specific areas of reading difficulty.
(4) Learning and Thinking Style Survey
Consisting of three surveys, these determine learning and thinking styles for both parents and child.
First, your child completes a self-evaluation survey.
Second, the parent also completes the same survey about his/her child (for greater accuracy). Knowing your child’s style helps best customize a tutoring program and pinpoint learning and study strategies that will yield the greatest gain.
Third, the parent completes a self-evaluation survey on his/her own learning and thinking styles. Knowing style differences between you and your child can help eliminate homework battles where your style preferences may not match those of your child.
A complete explanation of each style, along with a list of learning strategies, will be provided at a post assessment meeting.
THREE OPTIONAL ASSESSMENTS
Three additional assessments and test record analyses are available. The purpose of these assessments and analysis is to expand the available information about your child’s areas of strengths and weaknesses and help you further identify whether your child is operating at grade level, above grade level, or below grade level. As with the recommended core assessments, you will receive two summary forms upon completion or the information will be included with the information gathered from the core assessments. Duration of these three assessments varies between 20 to 90 minutes.
Optional Assessment Descriptions
(1) Developmental Spelling Stage
Useful for determining your child’s developmental spelling stage as either emergent-letter name-alphabetic, within word pattern, syllables and affixes, or derivational relations. If spelling is an area of weakness I offer the spelling program Words Their Way, that aligns with this assessment. The program has word lists that target spelling patterns that your child has not yet mastered. I pair this with research based spelling study strategies to help your child achieve spelling success.
(2) Writing Assessment
This assessment helps gain insight into your child’s independent writing ability. The assessment looks for your child’s ability to brainstorm, write with purpose, create coherent and understandable sentences, use correct grammar, format paragraphs properly, revise/edit, manage writing time efficiently, write single and multiple sentences and paragraphs.
(3) Math Diagnostic Test
Looks for areas of mastery vs. areas with gaps in content understanding that need to be worked on for your child to more easily complete complex mathematical operation and skills.
Test Record Analyses
I can evaluate both your child's most recent academic test scores from school and your child's state testing scores. From this information I can make a visual comparision of how your child is performing over various subejct areas with different testing formats. The visual comparision is shown on the Student Snapshot form seen below.
ASSESSMENT SUMMARY FORMS
After the assessments are completed, you will receive two performance summary forms to show your child’s strengths and areas of weakness. These forms help you to see individual areas and sub-areas where your child is at grade level, above grade level, or below grade level. We will schedule a convenient time to review the assessment summary forms and discuss details and next steps for tutoring. The summary forms are usually ready in a few days after the assessment is completed.
Summary Form Descriptions
Academic Scores
This form compiles the reading data (QRI) from the four recommended core assessments conducted with your child and can include the scores from any of the three optional assessments. The form addresses fundamental academic areas, such as: reading, spelling, writing, and math.
Child At-A-Glance
The Child At-A-Glance indicates areas where your child is at grade level, above grade level, or below grade level. The snapshot can also be used to track progress by comparing assessments that are at least six months apart.
ASSESSMENT FEES
The Four Recommended Core Assessments are provided for a combined fee of $150, which includes my time for preparation of test materials, two hours for child assessement, the hours for creating the two summary forms and a post-assessment meeting that is scheduled at a convenient time to review the assessment summary forms and discuss details and next steps for tutoring. Payment for the assessment can be made entirely upfront or in two parts, whichever you prefer. If made in two parts, $100 is payable on the day of assessment and $50 after reviewing the summary forms.
The Three Optional Assessments are provided for a fee of $25 each (Spelling, Writing, Math)
The Test Record Analyses is also provided for a fee of $25