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Brain Boost: Tutoring allows students to catch up, move to the next level
(Messenger-Inquirer (Owensboro, KY) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) May 02--Today's tutoring is not your grandmother's after-school instruction.
Students are catching up, moving ahead and feeding a passion for their favorite studies.
For Curline and Wally Olusula's older son and daughter, enrichment classes at the Owensboro 5-6 Center fed their minds and helped them to sail ahead on achievement tests.
This year, an adopted daughter who recently joined the Olusula family is catching up to grade level through participation in after-school programs.
"My daughter has been behind in her math skills, and the 5-6 center has developed an after-school program on measurements that is very interesting to her and other students," Curline Olusula said. "They enjoy it, and they don't even realize they're really learning."
That program, called Math Scene Investigation, allows students to use reasoning skills and work on weights and measurements. The name is a take-off on the popular television drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."
Students also benefit from reading assistance at the school, Olusula said. She credits her daughter's progress to the nurturing and extra attention from teachers. She's now reading up to grade level and "constantly has a book in her hand."
"The little incentives they get are so exciting to students," Olusula said. "She's never received that kind of encouragement before."
The 5-6 center is using a 21st Century Learning grant for tutoring students like Olusula's daughter who need a little push to reach their potential.
The students enrolled in the after-school tutoring are targeted based on their MAP -- Measures of Academic Progress -- test scores, said Nancy Avery, grant coordinator. The students take the MAP test three times during the year. Test results can be used for placement and to measures success.
"It's sort of a craze going on," said Kim Howard about the math game called sudoku that students in her after-school Math Games program were playing Friday at the Owensboro 5-6 Center. Photo by Jenny Sevcik, M-I
The 5-6 center identified these additional tutoring areas, called academic enrichment sessions:
n Readers theater. Set up like a coffee shop, it uses plays and poems to teach students how to improve their oral reading skills and to read with expression.
n Band help. Students work to improve performance on their specific instruments.
n Homework help. Students received instruction to assist with their assignments with sessions offered in the morning and after school.
n Three math sessions, Math Lab, Math Games and Math Scene Investigation.
"We try to make it interesting and fun for the students," Avery said. "When selecting the students, we send them a letter saying, 'You've been chosen,' and we reward them for their work."
Most tutoring programs center around reading and math.
In Daviess County Public Schools, the most comprehensive tutoring program is wrapped up in Extended School Services, part of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. This program funds tutoring services before, after and during school.
"Our ESS is connected to our overall learning through the state Program of Studies and Kentucky Core Content," said Jana Beth Francis, director of assessment, research and curriculum. "Tutoring can be for remediation when a student struggles in a content area, or it can be for preparation for testing such as CATS, SAT or ACT."
Some tutoring that takes place is just practice, Francis said. School academic teams fit the tutoring definition.
Many students participate in tutoring sessions for completing homework assignments and preparation for tests, said Julie Clark, director of middle and secondary education for DCPS. Those sessions may be one or two sessions or longer depending on whether the students are working to build skills.
Most ESS programming is for math, reading and writing, Clark said. Funds also are available for "jump-start activities" at transition grade levels -- kindergarten, sixth and ninth grades.
These activities allow teachers and students to interact in smaller groups. For example, sixth- and ninth-graders can come in during the summer before the entire student population arrives, get oriented with the building, and hear about what the school expects.
The Daviess County district also uses instructional assistants during the school day, mostly with primary students, to build reading skills.
Credit recovery options such as summer school programs also fall into the tutoring category.
At Apollo High School, a January credit recovery program allows students to get immediate results. If they lack a course credit in the fall, they must start to make it up in January.
Tutoring also may take the form of peer mentoring. In Owensboro Catholic Schools, National Honor Society members at the high school help younger students master concepts they are struggling with.
Even with all of the in-school and after-school tutoring, some parents may choose to find a personal tutor for their student or work with companies like Sylvan Learning Center. Sylvan offers tutoring at their sites or through online programs at every grade level including help with geometry, general math and reading skills.
"I would encourage parents who are considering private tutors to have the tutor know what is expected in the student's school and to have some sort of informal assessment," Francis said.
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