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1. It is best if two teachers are present in the tutoring room
to keep forty children on task.
2. The gains with this program are greatest when the student coach/teacher
is a second or third grade teacher,
and recruits students starting with their own classroom.
3. When this program is delivered in the classroom of
the elementary teacher/coach, they have all the grade-appropriate reading
and math resources at hand to fully utilize the tutors.
4. Experience has taught us that professional teachers make the best tutoring coaches.
Counselors from youth organizations may be excellent in their environments,
but youth counselors posses a different skill set than teachers,
and do not know the exact academic needs of many of the children.
All our high achieving tutored groups have had a second or third grade teacher as lead coaches.
Their intimate knowledge of the school materials and the
children's deficiencies has been invaluable.
5. Successful classroom teachers make the best coaches.
The most successful coaches have the practiced ability
to carry on a conversation with one person and simultaneously
spot students elsewhere in the room who are off task and get them back on task.
While this is a classroom skill,
it also is a helpful skill in managing a room of tutor-student groups.
6. A lesson learned from our highest performing tutoring group
is that the use of Accelerated Reader with tutor help is extremely effective.
This teacher and long time North Star coach raised
the percentage of students reading on grade level from 15% on grade level
at the start of the school year to 90% on grade level at the end of the year.
According to an analysis of the Colorado 2005 CSAP fourth grade reading scores
by the Bell Policy Center(1),
only forty percent of Colorado's Hispanic students are proficient or better in reading.
This teacher achieved reading levels
fifty percentage points higher than the state average.
7. Our other high-achieving programs also have teachers who
have had multiple years experience with North Star.
These stellar levels of achievement are the result of teacher creativity.
Discovering, recording and incorporating the effective lessons learned by these teachers
directly implementing the tutoring program is helping us to continue
to improve the North Star Tutor/Mentor Program.
8. Teachers who have used North Star Tutoring for several years are exceptionally effective
in directing the start of each tutoring session so that every tutor knows exactly
what their tutored children need help with that day. Consequently,
the work is started quickly and is directed at the need.
This simple action of quickly getting everyone onto his or her correct task equates
to extra time on task every session.
9. When teachers are the lead coaches, their school-time contact
with the students gives them the opportunity to remind the children
of the tutoring that day after school, and encourage their showing up.
References:
1. Anna C. K. van Duijvenvoorde, Kiki Zanolie, Serge A. R. B. Rombouts,
Maartje E. J. Raijmakers, and Eveline A. Crone.
Evaluating the Negative or Valuing the Positive?
Neural Mechanisms Supporting Feedback-Based Learning across Development.
The Journal of Neuroscience, 17 September 2008
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