Early Literacy Tutor Training Recipe Book

Download Early Literacy Tutor Training Recipe Book

Minimum Training
(approximately 8 hours)

Content Areas:

For providers with limited training time, we include all content areas and most tutor learning goals, but far fewer resources than in the longer training sequences. In conversations with early literacy tutoring providers with limited training time, we learned they find tutors to be better prepared if that brief training is wider and less deep across content areas, instead of leaving out important training content areas altogether. In this approach, providers must fill in additional details across content areas in the continuous development opportunities they provide after tutoring begins. We recommend this approach.

In training, it is important for providers to balance practical with conceptual learning and to anticipate tutors may feel they have not had sufficient practice before they begin tutoring. Resources in this sequence are as “light-weight” as possible, to help with this dilemma. The practice-based formal learning section of the Framework for Professional Learning describes how you can use conceptual resources to unpack instructional and relational routines that tutors are preparing to practice. These pedagogies might also help with time binds providers face.

 

How Children Learn to Read and How Adults Teach Them to Do So
Suggested Learning Goals Training Resources

Our primary responsibility as early literacy tutors is to accelerate children’s language and literacy skills. We do so by implementing instructional activities, interventions, or routines that are built on what psychology, linguistics, neuroscience and instructional research has taught us about how children learn to read and write and how adults teach all of them to do so. The resources in this module will support you to:

  1. Describe the components of word recognition and language comprehension and explain how they weave together into skilled reading.
  2. Describe what makes instruction explicit and systematic and why that type of instruction is essential in order for all children to learn to read the English language.
  3. (K-3) Define each of the big five areas of reading instruction for grades K-3, as determined by the National Reading Panel, and describe several evidence-based strategies for teaching reading skills in each area. 

OR 

(PreK) Describe the 11 skills or abilities of young children that predict later reading, writing, or spelling outcomes and describe several evidence-based strategies. for teaching those skills.

  1. Prepare to implement the instructional activities, routines, or interventions of your program and explain how they exemplify the principles of evidence-based reading instruction.
  2. Explain how assessments allow you to monitor student progress and determine the specific activities, routines or interventions within your program to deliver to students (or content to plug into those routines), so that your tutoring is responsive to their demonstrated needs. Prepare to administer the assessments your program uses.
  3. Describe research-based ways to support English Language Learners most effectively.

For objectives 1 & 2, choose from one resource from set 1:

  • Amplify’s Center for Early Reading’s Learning to Read, A Primer: Pt 1 AND Science of Reading, A Primer: Pt 2 are beginner level handbooks that break down the many components of how children learn to read.

    OR
  • TN State Collaborative on Reforming Education’s (SCORE ) The Science of Reading is a report sharing problematic misconceptions about reading instruction and critical research headlines that should inform instructional decision-making. It offers suggestions to carve a path forward that leads to the end of the reading crisis in Tennessee. Though performance data is specific to TN, the report shares information with broad applicability, particularly through page 13.

    OR
  • Student Achievement Partners’ Early Reading Accelerators Prezi and Early Reading Accelerator Slide Summary offer a detailed overview (the prezi) and a research recap (the slide summary) of two critical pieces in systematic early reading instruction: securing foundational skills and building knowledge and vocabulary. These tools offer information about these critical concepts and resources to use to turn the ideas into actions.

    OR
  • Deans for Impact’s The Science of Early Learning is a brief summarizing existing research related to how young children (from birth to age eight) develop skills across three domains: agency, literacy, and numeracy. Questions 5-8 are most relevant to early literacy tutors. This document is intended to serve as a resource to anyone who is interested in our best scientific understanding of how young children develop control of their own behavior and intentions, how they learn to read and write proficiently, and how they develop the ability to think mathematically. 

(K-3 only) For objective 3, use resource set 2, which are sections of a National Institute for Literacy’s guide summarizing the findings of the National Reading Panel Report and providing analysis and discussion in each of the five areas of reading instruction. Each section defines the skill, reviews the evidence from research, suggests implications for classroom instruction, describes proven strategies for teaching reading skills, and addresses frequently raised questions. 

(Pre-K only) For objective 3, use resource set 2:

For objective 4, use resource set 3, which you will provide:

  • The specific instructional activities, routines, or interventions that tutors will likely implement with students in the first 2 weeks of tutoring
 

For objective 5, choose resources from set 4, one of which you will provide:

  • Reading Rockets’ Reading 101: A Guide for Parents is an online guide designed to give parents key information about what it takes to learn to read and write and how to help children grow as readers, writers, and learners. It includes very brief but accurate information about how children learn and how adults can support them, in very brief paragraphs and bullets and short videos. It includes links to additional resources, including those in multiple languages. 
  • The specific assessments that tutors need to administer to students in your program (if relevant).
 

For objective 6, use this resource:

  • The Meadows Center’s 10 Key Policies and Practices for Teaching English Language Learners is a 12-page guide outlining practical guidance for educators of English Language Learners. Each instructional practice includes a concrete illustration of how an educator might apply it. The guide is developed for classroom educators and illustrations span K-12 grade levels, but tutors will still be able to learn from it.

Supporting the Whole Child
Suggested Learning Goals Training Resources

Our primary responsibility as early literacy tutors is to accelerate children’s language and literacy skills. Though most of our time and energy goes directly toward this aim, we are most effective when we realize that literacy skills are a subset of the critical skills that children are building during the PreK and early elementary years. To be primed to do this cognitive work, children have other needs that also need to be addressed. The resources in this module will set you up to explain:

  1. The neurosequential model and the basics of how to use the brain’s “regulate, relate, and reason” sequencing to help children learn 
  2. Use specific strategies to help children regulate
  3. Be aware of signs of abuse, depression, and anxiety

Choose 1-2 resources from below and those you provide:

Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education
Suggested Learning Goals Training Resources

Understanding CR-SE: When we become tutors, we begin working in (or near) public education systems that have the responsibility to educate all children. Unfortunately, we know that these systems do not support all children to achieve and thrive to their full potential. Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education is a framework that helps us take into account the historic and contemporary ways that educational institutions participate in the production of an unequal society where opportunities and resources are unevenly distributed along the lines of race, socioeconomic status, gender and sexual identity, language and other socially significant identity markers.

 

The resources in this module will support tutors to develop as Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Tutors in the following ways: 

  1. Learn the orientations and mindsets of culturally responsive-sustaining educators with a focus on examining how those mindsets influence the ways educators approach two important areas of their work -- relationship-building with students and families and holding high academic expectations for students.  
  2. Build emerging critical awareness of their beliefs and assumptions about schooling and the world.

READ: Explore the Transforming Our Public Schools guide to Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education (CR-SE) which was developed by the NYC Culturally Responsive Education Working Group and the Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative at the NYU Metro Center. Use the framework to build your tutors’ orientation to CR-SE. 

WATCH: The Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education videos contained in this section offer examples to see the model in action. Watch the short version titled “Quick Intro on CRE” video, produced by NYC Coalition for Educational Justice. The video features educators, parents, students, and community activists.

  • A Quick Intro on CRE (short version: 2:09)

And 

(Choose one to align with goal 1)

  • From the Culturally Responsive Education Hub, Raising a Critically Conscious Teaching Force (5:51) highlights the work being done to build individual and district-wide understandings of race, power, and privilege. 
  • From the Culturally Responsive Education Hub, Practicing Culturally Responsive Education (9:57) features current and former teachers who share their experience learning and practicing culturally responsive education in their classrooms and beyond.
  • From Dr. April Baker-Bell, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, Pedagogy (4:58) describes a framework ​​​​and pedagogical approach that intentionally and unapologetically centers the linguistic, cultural, racial, intellectual, and self-confidence needs of Black students. 
  • From Learning for Justice, second grade classroom teacher (5:07) Karen Schreiner, a winner of the Teaching Tolerance award in 2016, is an anti-bias educator with a firm and vocal commitment to racial equality. In her role as a second-grade teacher in a majority Latinx school, she developed a literacy-based curriculum that strengthens students' social-emotional skills, sharpens their sense of fairness and justice, and challenges them to engage in purposeful social activism to challenge the status quo and create change in their communities. 
    • For more information on Teaching Tolerance and the awards process (including past award winners to study and learn from) click here.
 

REFLECT: Reflection questions are powerful ways to get learners to process their own learning and apply those lessons to their own context. Consider 3-4 sample reflection questions for reflection while tutors watch the videos.

  • What are your reactions to CR-SE as a model? 
  • How does this compare to your own school experiences? 
  • Where do you see educators leading with a commitment to CR-SE? How are they...
    • Maintaining high academic expectations?
    • Creating a welcoming and affirming environment?
    • Demonstrating an ongoing commitment to their professional learning?
  • What underlying mindsets, beliefs and attitudes do you see teachers exhibiting? 
  • What can make CR-SE as a pedagogical approach effective in improving student outcomes? What can make this approach challenging?
  • How can you imagine applying what you’re learning to your tutoring context?
  • What concerns / questions do you have?

Reflecting on Your Own Schooling: To relate authentically to others, including young children, it helps to have insight into who we are and the cultural forces that have shaped us. Once we meet the children we will tutor, we can act on a humble desire to learn about the cultures and contexts in which they are growing up, consider the similarities to and differences from our own, and discern the implications of those for relationship-building with and academic support for students. Before we meet the students we’ll tutor, we will use the resources in this module to:

  1. Understand the cultures and sociopolitical contexts in which we were schooled.
  2. Consider the impact of your own schooling on your role as a tutor. 

Watch: Tutors can explore the social, economic and political forces that shaped both their schooling and their decision to become tutors by completing this module and reading the aligned article.  

  • Saga Coach is an online evidence-based tutor training program that gives educators tools they need to assist their learners. Developed by Saga Education, a leader in high-impact math tutoring, the modules below are also relevant to early literacy tutors:

AND

choose 1 video to supplement the above modules. All videos are sourced from the Culturally Responsive Education Hub.

  • Being Culturally Responsive as a White Teacher (3:38) shares a teacher’s learning about what it means to be an ally who is responsive to community needs and to honor community voices.
  • The Archeology of the Self (3:23) uses an archaeological approach to demonstrate to educators of all backgrounds how to do the “deep work” of excavating their personal histories and activating their racial consciousness as a precursor to working with students. 
  • Seen in the Classroom (3:14) offers the experience of a teacher of color in the classroom, and how race and ethnicity inform the role educators play in their students’ lives.
 

Review + Write: Intentional self-reflection provides an opportunity for tutors to deepen their understanding of their own stories, including examining their experiences with inequity and privilege. Consider using the questions in the self-reflection exercise linked below to support tutors in creating their own archeologies of self. 

Building Relationships with Young Children
Suggested Learning Goals Training Resources

With greater insight into what has shaped us, we can consider the importance of relationships as a foundation for learning. We will engage with the resources in this module in order to:

  1. Explain how neuroscience helps us understand the importance to their learning of children having empathic bonds with adults who teach them 
  2. Describe what adults can do to build connected, empathic relationships with students

Use the resources below:

  • PBS Learning Media’s The Power of Connection is a 7:03 minute video featuring Dr. Bruce Perry explaining the important role relationships have in learning and the practical ways to make true empathetic connections to students in academic settings.
  • Edutopia has developed a series of videos called How Learning Happens, which explore how teaching practices grounded in the science of learning and human development. The video linked below is from this series. Though it features classroom teachers or school-based staff, the practices they highlight can be modified to the early literacy tutoring context:
    • The Power of Relationships (3:41) includes science-based explanations of the power of relationships and illustrations of relationship-building in practice in classrooms.
  • In a blog entry, Dr. Bevin Reinen offers 33 adaptable strategies for building relationships with students in a K-12 virtual environment.