Welcome to these literacy and numeracy programs for children and adults! I hope this site is helpful for many parents, tutors, and teachers.

Parents are a glaringly undervalued resource in education and often get the Rodney "no respect" Dangerfield feeling. Many assume they have no role other than enforcer of homework even though they care deeply about the future of their children and are capable of doing more. Parents haven't had access to resources to take advantage of their full capability. The role of parents needs to be expanded to assure that their children master the 3-Rs.

The major reason why parents need to monitor their children's progress and provide help where needed is that many schools give mediocre or poor instruction for one or more of the following reasons:

• The education/publishing establishment often takes a wrong turn in teaching materials and methods, which I will say more about later.

• Many teachers were poorly trained by schools of education, have not been given effective coaching on the job, have not received adequate and appropriate professional development training, have not been held accountable for learning outcomes, and have not been given enough support by the school districts with respect to salaries and recognition, teacher's aides, supplies, and equipment.

• Schools commonly have curriculum-centered programs in which they specify what material is to be covered in a given time frame. Although the time allotted may be appropriate for the average learner, the slower learners or those with different learning styles may soon get hopelessly behind and shunted into remedial programs, and the most competent ones may get bored. Furthermore, the programs may not be validated by research and experience. In programs such as the Mastery Learning model the school specifies what the students must learn, and each learner is given the time and help needed to master each unit before going on to the next unit. In this model allowing a child to fail is unacceptable.

I tutored a boy who was in a third grade classroom but was performing at the early kindergarten level. Most of the instruction that he had received for three years was above his level, and he had completely given up. He didn't resist instruction, but he seemed completely defeated and depressed with no expectation that he could learn the 3-Rs. What he needed was to start again from scratch and to be given systematic instruction that enabled him to master each step before going to the next. He needed to be given confidence that he could and would learn the 3-Rs, but the school's ineffective special education program wasn't going to help him. He was on the road to becoming a despairing dysfunctional adult and probably a life-time burden on society.

A parent should know what the child is being taught and how well he is performing by following homework and talking to the teacher. This enables the parent to give help where and when it is needed. Parents must not wait until the child has failed. This is especially true in kindergarten and first grade.

I can hear people saying that parents aren't qualified to take part in teaching the 3-Rs. Tell that to the large and growing number of parents who are successfully home schooling their children K through 12. If many parents can do that, most literate parents can teach the 3-Rs if they have appropriate materials, methods, and manner.

You don't need to know a lick about teaching the 3-Rs before you start this program. It gives you background information (probably more than you really want) and for each task the instructions needed in the form of step-by-step scripts for you to read aloud so that both you and the learner know what to do. You do need to be a sensitive, caring cheerleader for the learner and be conscientious and well-organized. With this program I would expect that the typical literate parent can be just as effective as the typical professional tutor and more effective than some, and parents can save a lot of money by doing the tutoring rather than paying $35, more or less, per hour. Children who qualify can obtain free tutoring under the No Child Left Behind program, but finding a suitable qualified tutor is not assured.

Teaching a child the 3-Rs is usually not difficult, but I have learned from regrettable personal experience that there are five essentials for effective tutoring:

1. Establish a good working relationship with the learner. Parents should give children limited choices on some things such as reading material, but some matters should be non-negotiable such as whether the child is going to do his duty as a learner without whining.
   
2. Use methods and materials that are most suitable for the specific learner. I can't guarantee that my program will be the best for a particular learner, but it won't cost anything to try it.
   
3. Have a good general plan from which you derive your daily lesson plans. I address this in "Planning Instruction." You can't wing it and be effective.
   
4. Provide for the necessary practice, repetition, and review of each lesson for the learner to achieve mastery.
   
5. You must spend sufficient time at it. A child in school who is performing below grade level may need at least 30 minutes of tutoring in addition to homework five times a week.
   

Elementary school teachers, especially the younger ones who were taught little about explicit systematic phonics in college, may find some helpful information in this program. They may also find some useful ideas and activities to supplement their teaching or for the use of their aides and volunteer tutors.

These are experimental literacy and numeracy programs, but they are based for the most part on proven principles and techniques. This type of mastery instruction may not work well for all learners, but you can quickly find out how well it works for your particular learner and make needed adjustments or try another program. It contains a lot of information and ideas which I hope will be useful for tutors whether they use the lessons or not.

Saving and Printing Material

It is suggested that you save to your hard drive the current lesson so that you won't have to go online. You will need to set up a directory folder for the Web pages that you want to save.

You may want to print some material so that you can work from a hard copy rather than from a monitor. If you want to print an entire script, you can easily do so from your browser. If you want to print or save a part of a script or Web page, you can select the desired material, and if you are using Internet Explorer, click File, Print, Selection (under Print Range in the Print dialog box), and OK.

For Tutors

There are many tutoring opportunities. One may tutor children in a school tutoring program where you work under the supervision of a teacher. Organizations such as the YMCA and churches may have after school programs to help with homework. Finally, one may tutor independently using methods and materials of your choosing. One may tutor a child with a parent sitting in to learn how to help her own child and in some cases to improve her own skills. After school programs to provide help on homework may be a waste of time if the child is performing significantly below his grade level. What the child may need is about 30 minutes of intensive tutoring per day on the basics that he needs. Then one can help with homework that the child is capable of doing. One needs to have an agreement with the teacher on this matter.

When tutoring independently, one should start with an assessment of the child's skills. For children in the primary grades, you might use Basic Reading Inventory and Basic Arithmetic Inventory. This test can also be used to see if a particular book has the right level of difficulty. For another easily used test go to Reading Competency Test, which was made for The National Right to Read Foundation. For a general assessment guide that can be used with any reading material and for test material that estimates grade level go to Red Flag Reading Screening.

Whatever use you make of this program, I would love to hear from you. (See my e-mail address below.)

For Tutors Working with ESL Students

Tutors working with students for whom English is a second language may wish to check out the following sections:

• Phonics/Writing/Spelling Script Links, which treats English spelling and pronunciation patterns. Exercises can be used to teach spelling and to help with problem phonemes. (The "short i" speech sound, for example, is not used in many languages and must be learned for English pronunciation to avoid saying /heem/ for "him," etc.)
• Syllables, which explains how syllables work in pronouncing English words.
• Script for Word Attack Strategies, which has exercises for pronouncing English words of more than one syllable.
• Scripts for Assisted Story Reading, which has suggested techniques for modeling reading. (Each language has its own "tune" as well as pronunciation that must be learned. Choose one of these assisted reading techniques that is appropriate for the student. See the suggestion in "Activity 2: Assisted Story Reading" for reading along with a tape.)
• Affixes and Combining Forms.
• Tutoring English Grammar and Composition.

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Your feedback will be more than welcome. Please send an e-mail message to me, Bob Parvin: bandcparvinXhotmail.com (Substitute @ for X. I'm trying to hide my address from spammers.)
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Copyright (c) 2001 and 2008 Robert G. Parvin. Parents, tutors, and teachers may download, copy, rearrange, and revise this material for their own teaching purposes. This web site is made available free of charge "as is," with no warranties whatsoever. If you are dissatisfied with this web site, or any portion thereof, your exclusive remedy shall be to cease using the web site.

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