2 Different Reading Together Strategies To Use When Tutoring Primary Aged Students

6 January 2017
 Categories: Education & Development, Blog

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If you are tutoring primary age students, there are many benefits that your students can experience by incorporating reading together alongside independent reading and reading aloud. Here are two different ways that you can read together with your students, and a brief explanation of how each of these different strategies will help the child you are tutoring with their reading skills and ability.

#1 Explicit Modeling

We often expect child to know how to strategize through words that they can't pronounce or don't know without showing them how to do this. With explicit modeling, you put into practice and show the child you are tutoring how to use the different reading strategies that you have taught them.

With this strategy, you read aloud and you think out loud with the child you are tutoring. You demonstrate the strategies that you typically use inside of your head to work through difficult text out loud. For example, with the sentence, "The volcano erupted and ash, lava, and gas came pouring out of the top."  You would read the first few words, and when you get to the word erupted, you would sound the word out loud, and then blend it together. After you finished reading the sentence, you would then go back to the word erupted and explain how you didn't know what it meant until you read the rest of the sentence and how you think erupted must mean something similar to exploded.

By saying all of this out loud, you will model how to sound out and blend together a difficult word and you will model how to use context to determine meaning. You can do this with whatever type of reading strategy you are working on. This is a great way to show the student you are tutoring how to actively use the strategies they are learning when they are actually reading on their own.

#2 Choral Reading

Often times, even when students have the skills to read to themselves and out loud, they don't have the confidence to read out loud. Choral reading is a great way to build the reading confidence of the child that you are tutoring. Choral reading is also a good strategy to use when you are trying to build both fluency, speed and expression.

With choral reading, you'll want to start by reading the text together. When you first start out, make sure that your voice is a little louder than the child and that you are reading a little faster than the child reads. This will allow the child to follow you, which will help with their reading comprehension and fluency and it will allow them to mimic your expression as you read. As the child you are working with builds their confidence and fluency, bring the volume of your voice down so that the child's voice is louder, and slow the speed down so that you are really reading together and the child is not just following you. Adjust your voice volume and speed as needed to help the child master their target fluency and speed ratings, as well as develop a knack for using the right expressions when reading aloud.

Combine these two reading aloud strategies with regular read aloud and independent reading to help the child you are tutoring reach their reading goals. You can also utilize these tips if you are homeschooling your own child.