Strengthen the skills of your tutors or homework coaches and liven up training with these three LEARNS-produced videos. Actual tutors and youth demonstrate common literacy and homework help challenges and practical strategies to address them. Show a whole video as part of your orientation for new volunteers, or use selected segments in in-service trainings to improve specific practices.
Built for Success: Good Practice in Volunteer Tutor Programs
(DVD, 30 minutes, closed captioned) Features four tutoring projects that include community and national service volunteers. Video portraits highlight characteristics of successful programs, identified through research and supported by practitioners. Click to play the complete video:
Beyond the Right Answer: Effective Homework Help
(DVD, 32 minutes, closed captioned) Highlights best practices for providing homework help in out-of-school time programs. The video has a companion guide with discussion questions and tips for training homework coaches. Click to play a preview of this video:
Tutoring Video Compilation
(DVD, 60 minutes total, closed captioned) A collection of four separate tutor-training videos with a companion guide containing discussion questions and tips for training tutors. Click to view each video:
- Lisa and Crystal: Learning to Read (9 minutes)
Shows the strategies that Lisa, the teacher, uses to help Crystal, a beginning reader, work on developing her reading skills. Viewers can analyze Crystal’s strengths and weaknesses, and think about appropriate next steps. - Yolene and Blayn: Reading Comprehension (14 minutes)
Demonstrates how tutors can use conversation to build reading comprehension and extend student thinking. This tutoring session also includes a reading comprehension game and writing activity. - Rosa and Melany: Reading in English (15 minutes)
Documents how Rosa (the tutor) reads, plays a word game, and writes with 7-year-old Melany. Viewers observe strategies that effectively support linguistically and culturally diverse children. - Reading for Meaning: Good Practice in Volunteer Tutoring (22 minutes)
Helps train volunteers working with children who struggle to read fluently. This video introduces you to Emily, a second-grader whose lack of fluency interferes with her reading comprehension.
How to Order:
Contact Education Northwest or the National Service Knowledge Network to order a free copy of these DVDs.
National Service Knowledge Network, 1-800-860-2684, ext. 142, rc-shipping@etr.org
Education Northwest, 1-800-361-7890, Nicky.Martin@educationnorthwest.org