Writing and reading | Academic Tutoring

Supporting students in writing and writing skills that are the core for high school and beyond

Moving from simple sentence structure to complex
Writing a paragraph with a clear claim (or topic sentence), evidence, reasoning to explain how the evidence supports the claim, and conclusion.
Researching and writing a five-paragraph essay
Reading fluency and comprehension

Writing

Sentence structure

As students practice sentence writing, they work to make their sentence structure more interesting while maintaining the clarity so important in written communication. We play games, use models from their favorite books, and create sentences students are proud of.

Paragraph writing

Beginning in upper elementary through the beginning of high school, students learn how to write a paragraph using a topic sentence (claim), evidence, and reasoning to connect their evidence to the topic sentence. I support this practice by giving students scaffolding to support the organization of their thoughts. In addition, we play games and use models to help students recognize clear and interesting writing. As they practice, I gradually take the structures away and ask them to reflect how they work more independently. Once students write paragraphs that are clear and organized, we learn how paragraphs can work together in a longer essay.

Five-paragraph essay

There is a specific structure to the five-paragraph essay that middle- and high-school students learn, with an introduction paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. Together we look at models to appreciate and critique the structure, clarity, and interest level of an essay. From there I guide my student through the process, incorporating structures to make the organization clear, and my student’s interests to make the work fun.

Reading fluency and Comprehension

In upper elementary and middle school students can struggle in specific ways:

Reading aloud is less smooth than they’d like - they stumble over vocabulary or complex sentence structures.
They read a page and then realize they don’t remember much of what they read.

As students move from “learning to read” to “reading to learn,” and into middle school, review and practice for reading fluency and reading comprehension can be important. In many cases the opportunity for a student to read out loud and discuss the content in a quiet, one-on-one setting without time pressure or awareness of peers is powerful.

In our structured environment students have time and patience to read for comprehension. In this setting students learn strategies for discovering the meaning of new vocabulary, to look for clues in literary devices, and to efficiently and accurately record ideas.