Tutorial

Tutorial meets daily in a one-to-one setting for fifty minutes each day. This class focuses on the remediation and development of the student’s literacy skills and provides explicit instruction in English language structure and usage. The curriculum for each Tutorial is designed based on the student’s individual needs as determined through both formal and informal testing and analysis of student work samples. As the teacher uses a diagnostic-prescriptive approach to instruction, revisions are made on a continuous basis as the student’s skills evolve and expand. Specific instruction is provided in phonemic awareness and analysis in order to improve the student’s decoding and encoding skills. Through this instruction the Tutorial seeks to improve the student’s ability to decode textual material, improve comprehension of literature, and develop the student’s ability to organize and compose written language that will adequately demonstrate the student’s comprehension of material he or she has read or heard read.

Daily class activities include development of phonemic awareness, syllabic structure of words, morphemic study and analysis for the development of vocabulary skills, and decoding practice with controlled text and with selected literature that is at the current instructional decoding level. Whenever possible, the selected literature includes text from grade-level English classes. Writing activities are done in concert with the literature being read, and are designed to teach the student organizational scaffolds to compose written assignments typical of writing assignments students are asked to complete in grade-level academic classes.