Understanding Reading Tutoring: Key Concepts & Tips for Parents
Learning to read doesn’t happen naturally for the vast majority of children; it’s a complex process that takes place in the brain and requires a specific type of instruction. And if your child has been diagnosed with a learning disability it's important to understand that they may need additional specialized instruction to succeed.
With so many educational buzzwords out there, I know it might feel overwhelming to navigate the world of reading instruction. To help, I’ve compiled a list of essential reading terms and skills that you may encounter. Whether you're looking to support your child at home or simply want to better understand the language of reading instruction, this page is here to guide you!
A typical 45-minute reading tutoring session is designed around the science of reading, ensuring a solid foundation in proven, research-backed methods. The session is personalized to your child’s specific needs, focusing on key areas such as phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary.
Each session will include reading short texts, where my students practice decoding, fluency, and comprehension skills. I also use games, interactive activities, and hands-on materials to make learning more effective and engaging.
🔍 The science of reading is an evidence-based approach to teaching reading. It is grounded in research and focuses on effective methods for helping children become proficient readers.
🧠 This approach emphasizes how the brain learns to read, covering key areas such as phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Each of these components plays an essential role in developing strong reading skills.
📚 The science of reading is informed by research from multiple fields, including cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and education. By understanding how reading develops, educators and parents can use best practices to support literacy growth.
✅ Effective reading instruction must be explicit, systematic, diagnostic, and prescriptive. This means teaching skills directly, in a structured way, while continually assessing and adjusting instruction to meet individual student needs.
🔤 Instruction should include phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. These components work together to help children decode words, understand meaning, and become confident readers.
📊 Regular assessments help educators and parents tailor instruction to address a child’s strengths and areas that need improvement. Personalized support ensures that every student progresses at their own pace.
🎧 Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds, or phonemes, within words. This foundational skill is critical for learning to read and spell.
🚧 Children who struggle with phonemic awareness may have difficulty recognizing rhyming words, counting syllables, blending sounds together, or segmenting words into individual phonemes. Without these skills, decoding words in reading becomes much harder.
🎶 Playing rhyming games helps children recognize sound patterns in words, strengthening their ability to hear similarities and differences in speech.
✂️ Practicing sound segmentation allows children to break words apart into their individual sounds, reinforcing their awareness of how sounds blend to form words.
🔎 Identifying phonemes within words helps children recognize the beginning, middle, and end sounds, improving their ability to decode unfamiliar words.
🧩 Encouraging sound blending teaches children to put phonemes together to form words, an essential step in early reading development.
📖 Phonics instruction teaches children how letters and sounds correspond, helping them decode words accurately. Mastering phonics is a key step in becoming a fluent reader.
🔑 A strong foundation in phonics allows children to read with confidence, improving their ability to recognize words automatically and focus on comprehension.
🔡 Children should first learn to recognize uppercase and lowercase letters while associating them with their corresponding sounds.
🔍 As students progress, they should be introduced to more complex letter combinations, such as digraphs (th, sh, wh), in a structured and sequential way.
📖 Using word lists and decodable books provides valuable practice, helping children apply phonics skills in real reading situations.
🗣️ A strong vocabulary is essential for reading comprehension and effective communication. The more words a child knows, the better they will understand and express themselves through reading and writing.
📚 Expanding vocabulary helps students grasp the meaning of new texts, make connections between ideas, and improve overall literacy skills.
📖 Encouraging contextual learning helps children determine the meanings of new words by using clues from surrounding text, fostering independent word learning.
🖍️ Creating word maps provides a visual way to explore word meanings by including definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and example sentences.
🎲 Engaging in word games, such as crossword puzzles, word searches, and interactive quizzes, makes vocabulary practice fun and reinforces word knowledge.
🧠 Reading comprehension is the ability to understand and interpret text. It involves making meaning from words, sentences, and larger ideas within a story or passage.
🔗 Strong comprehension skills help children extract important details, make connections, and think critically about what they read.
🔮 Encouraging children to make predictions before and during reading helps them engage with the text and anticipate what will happen next based on context clues.
❓ Teaching students to ask questions about the text before, during, and after reading deepens their understanding and encourages active engagement.
📝 Guiding children in summarizing key points in their own words helps reinforce comprehension and ensures they grasp the main ideas of what they read.