Early Literacy Tutor Continuous Learning Resource Bank

Introduction

This Early Literacy Tutor Continuous Learning Resource Bank is part of the National Student Support Accelerator’s Professional Learning Toolkit for Early Literacy Tutors which consists of the following three sections:

• A Framework for Professional Learning that describes and provides resources for implementation for three recommended modes of professional learning, all with an understanding of and commitment to Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education:
  • Practice-based Formal Learning 
  • Feedback and Individualized Coaching 
  • A Community of Support and Social Learning
• An Early Literacy Tutor Training Recipe Book that offers critical ingredients in the four core content areas needed to build a strong scope and sequence of training, before tutors are working directly with students.
  • Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education
  • Building Relationships with Young Children
  • How Children Learn to Read and How Adults Teach Them to Do So
  • Supporting the Whole Child
• This Early Literacy Tutor Continuous Learning Resource Bank to support early literacy tutoring providers and districts to support ongoing professional learning of tutors, once they have begun instructing students. These resources are also organized by the same four core content areas listed above.

We have selected resources for inclusion in this bank because they meet two or more of the following criteria:

• Early literacy tutoring providers or experts in the field recommend them.
• Organizations provide them as open-source tools, available for free use by all.
• They align with an evidence-based, structured literacy approach to language and literacy instruction. 
• They address topics related to important educational needs of the whole child, beyond language and literacy, are evidence-based, and honor the child’s full humanity.

We include online courses from the Cox Campus, a free learning portal designed to distill the science of reading into actions adults can take when interacting with children. These Cox Campus courses are accredited by the International Accreditors for Continuing Education and Training, and if tutors complete them, they will receive a certificate that shows their continuing education credit from an IACET accredited provider. Many states and school districts require teachers to use IACET CEUs toward license or certification renewal, and some birth through pre-K teachers can also apply their certificates for professional development requirements.

Use the resources from this bank, alongside the instructional and relationship-building materials your tutors use with students and artifacts from their tutoring sessions (e.g., video clips, student work, etc.), to build your own program of continuous learning for tutors. Different from our approach in the recipe book, we only suggest content areas for professional learning, rather than specific learning goals. This choice is intentional, as once tutors begin working with students, the goals they work toward should be individualized to the strengths and needs of the tutor. The Coaching Goals section of the Framework for Professional Learning offers guidance for how to set such goals. 

In some circumstances it is strategic to identify in advance a common set of learning objectives that all or most tutors will work toward. For example, if your program has limited training time, you might prioritize tutor time with some of the resources from the lengthier training sequences, or you might know from previous years that most tutors find a common set of practices challenging in the first few weeks. You might get in front of that challenge by being prepared with “just in time” professional development support when the common challenge arises. 

While we leave these specific decisions to you, we offer resources across a range of areas that may be relevant to tutors.