Jean Schaber

In my role as Coordinator at The Reading Laboratory in Portland, Oregon, I was responsible for conducting research at Prescott Elementary School for two years. We trained eight high school students and twenty mothers to tutor children in grades two through six with basic phonic skills and sight vocabulary but emphasized comprehensive categories. We utilized McGraw Hill's Reading for Concepts series for sight vocabulary and comprehension as well as a phonics list of four thousand words I compiled from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. This list is available in my book Where Is That Vowel?

The trained tutors worked with students individually in the back of a third of the classrooms. We then compared the controlled and experimental group's mean percentage gain in vocabulary and comprehension with the use of pre- and post-testing.

Our goal was to prove the value of trained tutors aiding the classroom teacher. We were immensely satisfied with our results. The methods we used are available in my book A Reading Tutor's Toolkit.

Check out my website at guidefortutors.com