Measuring student improvement is essential when you tutor.  After all, how can you tell whether your tutoring program has or has not succeeded unless you test the student’s improvement?  You need to pre-test before you start tutoring.  Have a midpoint test, and of course, a test at the end of your tutoring program.  
 
If you do not test, you will have no idea whether your tutoring techniques are working or not.  But let us look at the way you test, which is just as important.
 

​Do you just test at the student’s grade level?
I work with at-risk students.  Some of my students have failed in school for two or more years.  Others are struggling and just need a different teaching method.  Therefore, I cannot simply say, “Oh, you are a 4th grader; therefore, I will give you the 4th grade test.  I use a testing procedure that allows each and every student to work up to their ability. 

That is, I use a step system so that students’ can progress up to their reading level.  I have had 1st graders who could read at the third grade level but had zero comprehension.  I have had 4th graders who could not read at the pre-kindergarten level.  Therefore, just giving a student their grade level test will not work.
 
So, when I give the pre-test, all students start at step one, regardless of whether they are 1st, 3rd, 5th, or 6th graders.  My test packet enables me to accurately identify the student's reading level and reading problems. 
 
Students “capture” the words that they are struggling with.  I use the word “capture:” instead of saying the student missed 10 words, I say the student captured 10 words that we want to work on.  Yes, the students know they missed the word, but they really like saying they captured it more than saying they missed it.  Then, we proceed to work on the captured words.
 
 
Should students be tested at the end of each tutoring session?
I also like to check at the end of each tutoring session to make sure that the student understood what I taught for that day. 
 
Don't give pop quizzes.  Everyone hates pop quizzes.  
 
Since vowel clustering is my teaching method, I use a vowel board to summarize, test, and reteach at the end of each session to make sure the student understood what I taught for that particular day.  I try to turn my testing into a game with the vowel board, but testing is very important.  Testing can tell you whether your student is ready to go to the next lesson or whether you need to go back and reteach the lesson again.  Let’s look at a preview from my new tutoring book.  Look at this from page 87:
 
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Success stories 

• A 15-year-old, who had failed for 9 straight years, learned to read in 3 ½ years.  
• A fifth grader, reading at the 2nd and 3rd grade level, moved up to the sixth-grade level in reading in only 21 weeks with one-hour, once-a-week tutoring.  
• A second grader mastered difficult vowel sounds through online tutoring.  

 
Vowel clustering works with all ages - children, teens, and adults. 
 
Do you know a child or teenager who is failing in reading? If so, this book is for you.  
 
Vowel clustering works with all students, including children, teens, and adults, regardless of age or reading problem. Vowel clustering teaches students to break words down into letter sounds. Vowel Clustering improves fluency and comprehension. Vowel clustering has been tested for over 20 years and proven to work with struggling, at-risk, and failing students.  
 
At my Reading Orienteering Club, we have had several students enter the program failing, then move up four grade levels in reading in one year using vowel clustering. Vowel clustering may be used by parents, homeschoolers, tutors, and teachers. Vowel clustering works equally well in classrooms and after-school programs. You do not need to be a teacher or have special training to use this book. The step-by-step program is easy to follow. The book gives instructions for one-on-one tutoring or small groups. Everything you need is included in this one book.  
 

A reader has requested that I talk more about teaching vowel clusters, so let me explain why the way you teach vowel clusters is so important. 

Students must understand vowel clusters in order to learn to read and to spell words.  Words are not always spelled the way they sound, so you cannot just rely on sounding out words.  Also, as I said before, do not dissect reading, spelling, and writing into different sections or teach separately.  When you are tutoring, teach reading, spelling, handwriting, oral reading, fluency, and comprehension all at the same time.  How? 
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I use vowel clustering, a teaching method that allows you to (1) teach children to sound words out and connect with the oral language system (decode and encode letter sounds) as well as (2) teach children to spell words, even words that use vowel and consonant clusters, and (3) teach children to comprehend, write, and practice fluency from the very beginning.  This is where vowel clusters become really important.
 
What is a vowel cluster?
First, let’s define vowel cluster.  A vowel cluster is when two adjoining vowels combine together to make a single sound.  The vowels may work alone, or they may combine with one or more consonants.  For example, eigh.  The ei vowel cluster combines with the gh consonant cluster to use the long a vowel sound, as in the word eight.  Notice that the vowel/consonant cluster uses the long a vowel sound but there is not even the letter a in the word.  This is where children who struggle become very, very confused.  [I talk more about how to teach the eigh cluster on pages 43 and 44 in my book:  Why Can’t We Teach Children to Read?] 
 
Phonics
In phonics, teachers normally teach the short a sound, then long a sound with silent e.  Later phonics talks about irregular sounds.  It is these irregular vowel sounds that most students who come to my reading clinic are completely and totally confused about.  As one student explained, “I got it when they talked about short a and long a with silent e, but where did all these others come from?” 
 
Vowel Clustering
This is why I use vowel clustering.  Vowel clustering teaches all of the sounds for letter a at the same time; therefore, students can see from the first day that the letter a is not just a long and short sound.  Even my first graders go to the vowel board and work with letter sounds so that they can learn how words are pronounced and spelled at the same time. 

As you will notice from the vowel board, there are 6 different vowel clusters which use the long a vowel sound.  When students look at the vowel board and “match the sound,” they are also matching the vowel cluster as well.  This helps students learn to pronounce the word as well as to spell the word.
There are no rules to memorize, and students are never allowed to guess at a word.  Students are learning to work with words and learn why words are pronounced and spelled differently.  It is this level of understanding that allows students to move up 2 and 4 grade levels in one year in my reading programs.  All of my programs use vowel clustering.

Vowel clustering teaches students to decode or break words down into individual letter sounds or sound clusters and then to encode or reassemble those sounds and sound clusters back into pronounceable words.  But vowel clustering doesn’t stop there.  Students match words by sound on the vowel board and by how words are spelled at the same time.  Then, they use the 4 Steps to learn the meaning of the word, how it is used in a sentence, and to write the word correctly.  [The 4 Steps teaching technique is emphasized in each chapter of the book.  Therefore, students learn to use the 4 Steps effectively.]

There are 15 different vowel and/or vowel-consonant clusters used just by letter a.  Every single vowel sound [a e i o u] uses vowel clusters.  This is why I use the vowel clustering teaching method. 
 
Is vowel clustering successful with struggling and failing students?
The student who I quoted above arrived at my reading clinic late in the fall term.  The parent was in tears because the school said that they were going to put the student back in 2nd grade because he wasn’t ready for 3rd grade.  When I tested him, he was reading at beginning 2nd grade with poor comprehension, and first grade spelling.  Since he joined late, I used individual one-on-one tutoring [methods from this book] to catch him up with the other students in my reading clinic.  By May, he was reading middle 4th grade level with 100% comprehension and beginning 4th grade spelling.

The vowel clustering method also teaches spelling, handwriting, oral reading fluency, comprehension, and story writing.  All of my reading programs teach vowel clustering.  Vowel clustering has been tested and proven to work with struggling, at-risk, and failing students.  A student, who failed for nine years using balanced literacy and phonics, learned to read in 3 ½ years using vowel clustering as taught in my new tutoring book featured at the top of the page. 

I have even had struggling students move up four grade levels in one year using vowel clustering.  These were students who had failed multiple years in schools that taught whole language, balanced literacy, and phonics.  So yes, we can teach students to read, but to do so, we must change the methods that we use to teach reading.  We must also change the methods that we use when tutoring. 

Today’s struggling students deserve the very best we can offer.  Tutoring can make a difference.  Simply using phonics instead of whole language is not enough.
 
So, how should we be teaching students vowel clusters?
Vowel clustering teaches all the vowel sounds in clusters.  Remember, there are seven different sounds for the letter a, and the long a sound is just one of those seven sounds.  The long a vowel sound can use:  ea, ai, ay, ei, ey, eigh, and silent e.  Of course, the letter a can also make the long a vowel sound when it stands alone, as with the word apron. 

In my tutoring book, there are detailed step-by-step instructions for teaching each vowel sound.  I even provide an “instructor” section that has the exact words you need to read or say to the student to explain vowel clusters. 

So, if you are only introducing students to the long a sound through silent e when you are tutoring, you have created a problem and confused struggling students, especially when you come along later and introduce irregular vowel sounds.  Irregular vowel sounds that are thrown in later is how most students get lost while learning vowels. This is also one of the main reasons that phonics fails with at-risk students.
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For more information on teaching vowel clusters, see:  Vowel Clustering Works Better than Phonics with At-Risk Students
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​If you’d like a longer preview from the book, click here. 
 
If you have questions or need help in tutoring, please contact me.  I’m always happy to help.

So many children are hurting this summer.  Plain and simple, they are failing in reading.  Yes, many children fell behind with COVID, but the Nation’s Report Card shows us that even before COVID over 60% of the students in 4th, 8th, and 12th grade could not read at grade level. 
 
As these three pie charts illustrate (based on data from the 2019 Nation’s Report Card), reading failure is at an all-time high. 

As the charts show, reading scores show little change through the grade levels. "Proficient" (in blue) identifies students able to read at or above their grade level. "Not Proficient" (in red) identifies students reading below grade level.

​As these four pie charts illustrate (based on data from the 2019 Nation’s Report Card), reading failure is at an all-time high. 

These scores recorded in 2019 are from test data before COVID.  Because of the pandemic, we do not have a follow-up score for 2021.

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For a complete report on our nationwide problem of reading failure, read: Reading Wars Are over! Phonics Failed. Whole Language Failed. Balanced Literacy Failed. Who Won? It Certainly Wasn't the Students. 
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There is an answer
So, yes, I agree, we have a problem in the U.S.  It’s called reading failure.  But, this summer, you can help a child learn to read.  Tutoring can make a difference.  Unfortunately, not just any kind of tutoring will help.   

As I have said previously, we need to adjust our tutoring curriculum to the needs of the students.  We also must select tutoring curriculum that helps struggling students.  Not all teaching approaches work for every student.

We also know that the longer reading failure continues, the worse it becomes.  Some researchers say that if children do not learn how to read by the end of first grade that 75% of those children will never learn to read.  I see what the researchers are saying, but I don’t agree because I have taught many children to read who failed for two, four, even nine years.  Many of the children who come to my reading clinic have been struggling for more than 2 years and some have been failing in reading for more than 2 or 3 years.  This summer if we use tutoring as an opportunity to change these children’s lives by teaching them to read, we will change their lives forever.

I use vowel clustering. I’ve been using vowel clustering for 23 years, and yes, I really have had students move up four grade levels in reading in one year.
 
Do you know a child, teen, or adult struggling to read?  If so, contact me.  I will be happy to help.

We really can teach children and teens to read.  To do so, we just need to change how we teach and tutor struggling students.  If you are working with a student this summer, try vowel clustering.  It works

So, what do we do? 
Do we just give up and say those students will probably never read?  No, we should never give up.  For Helpful Hint #4, I suggest that we never give up or never say that a child can’t learn to read.  Because research shows that yes, struggling, even failing students can be taught to read.  As I explain on page 13 of my new book, Why Can’t We Teach Children to Read?

If we use the correct teaching and tutoring methods, we actually can teach children, teens, and adults to read.  Here is a chapter preview:

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Preview from page 13:

A mother arrived at my reading clinic in distress, saying, “Why can’t my child learn to read? The school says nothing can be done.  There’s no hope.  They say that I must accept that my child will never learn to read.  I don’t understand.”  Neither did I, so I taught the child to read.
 
Vowel clustering can be used to teach anyone to read—adults, teenagers, and children.  As with most learning tasks, the earlier we start teaching, the better, but anyone of any age can learn to read.  It is never too late.

So, if you ask, “Why can’t my child learn to read?”  The answer is that your child can learn to read if you use the correct teaching method.  If we use the correct teaching method, even children who have previously failed can be taught to read. 

Eighteen years of research show that vowel clustering works to teach at-risk, struggling, and failing students to read.  At my reading clinics, yes, we’ve had students move up four grade levels in reading in one year.  Using one-on-one tutoring and the exact method being taught in this book, one student moved up three grade levels in only six months.  How?  Vowel clustering.
 
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Helpful Hint on Tutoring to Help Students Overcome Learning Losses: #1

Helpful Hint for Summer Tutoring #2.  Select Your Tutoring Curriculum Carefully.

​Helpful Summer Tutoring Hint #3: How Do You Adjust Your Tutoring Curriculum to Fit the Needs of Your Student?
.

My second tutoring tip was to adjust your tutoring curriculum to fit the needs of the individual student.  A reader has asked, “How do you do that?”

Excellent question. 
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Helpful Hint for Summer Tutoring #2.  Select Your Tutoring Curriculum Carefully. 
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Let’s spend a few minutes talking about how you can effectively adjust tutoring curriculum to fit the needs of struggling students.  Please notice that I said “effectively.”
 
Yes, people adjust curriculum every single day, and we have been tutoring students for years. Unfortunately, if we do not match our teaching curriculum to the students’ needs, tutoring does not solve reading failure.  We can make adjustments, but unless those adjustments are exactly what the student needs to learn, the adjustments, the curriculum, and the tutoring will fail.
 
Almost every single student I have worked with over the past 23 years has come to my reading clinic after the school had tried one-on-one tutoring, often systematic phonics tutoring.  All of the students were struggling, most were failing in reading when they joined my reading clinic.
 
So, Why Are We Failing? 
Notice, I did not ask, why is the student still failing.  No, we are failing to help students overcome their problems and learn to read because we are not giving students a curriculum that enables them to understand how to read.  We are not adjusting the curriculum to the needs of the individual student.
 
Let’s Look at an Example. 
Chapter 8 of my new tutoring book,Why Can't We Teach Children to Read?  gives an example of a third-grade student who had been taught in the classroom with balanced literacy and one-on-one tutoring in systematic phonics.  Yet, she was still failing when she was sent to my reading clinic. Here's the story from the book: 

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                A third grader at my reading clinic was very quiet and shy.  When I talked to her teacher at school, the teacher said that her problem was comprehension.  When I tested her, I found that her comprehension was weak, but her main problem was that she did not know the “irregular vowel sounds” as phonics labels them.  She had been taught balanced literacy in the classroom and had received one-on-one tutoring in systematic phonics. Even though she was a third grader and could read the first grade reading test and some of the beginning words for second grade, she needed to go back to the very beginning and relearn all of the vowel sounds. 
                I find it much more effective to reteach all of the vowel sounds, rather than guessing which vowel sound the student knows and which ones the student does not know.  Teaching each vowel sound as a complete vowel cluster helps the student link directly into the oral language system. 
                At the end of the year, she was testing between fourth and fifth grade in reading.  Her comprehension was 100%, and she was very happy.  She had been afraid she would never learn to read.  As she told me about midway through the year, “I didn’t want to be dumb; but no one would help me.”

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​Vowel clustering adjusted to the exact needs of this student.  Vowel clustering teaches struggling students to both see and hear different vowel sounds.  Vowel clustering is both visual and oral.  Students can see and hear how words change their sound. 
 
The vowel center organizes words by sound.  The vowel center also demonstrates visually how the same letters can combine but represent different sounds. 
  
There are no rules to memorize.  Vowel clustering shows how words are spelled and how they are pronounced.  Students learn to work with vowel sounds.

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For more about vowel clustering, read: Vowel Clustering Works Better than Phonics with at-Risk Students
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This is just one example of how a curriculum can be adjusted to the needs of a student. 
​
Each chapter in Why Can't We Teach Children to Read? shows examples of how to adjust curriculum to the specific needs of students.  You cannot just make “one-adjustment-fits-all” decisions.  You must make adjustments for every single student, and the adjustments you make will be different for every student. 

Teach to the needs of your students.

If you’d like a longer preview from the book, click here. 
 
If you need help in tutoring, please contact me.  I’m always happy to help.

All summer long, I will be offering free tutoring hints and recommend free summer reading materials. More coming soon.

I am also still researching and writing about psychological harms in the classroom.  I have found some new problems we should discuss.  Stay tuned.  I’m just finishing my research.
 
Tutoring Hint #2:  Select a teaching curriculum that fits the specific needs of your child or student. Do not just use the curriculum everyone else is using or something that you found on the Internet. Select your tutoring curriculum carefully.
 
If your tutoring curriculum and methods do not fit the needs of your child or student, your tutoring sessions will not be successful.  When children fail to learn to read, or do not improve their comprehension while being tutored, the problem is most likely neither the child nor (in most cases) the teacher.  The problem is the teaching method.
 
I have used vowel clustering for the past 23 years while working with all ages. I have worked in both inner city and rural locations. I have worked with students diagnosed with dyslexia, ADHD, Asperger’s, autism, and an array of cognitive processing problems. Vowel clustering allows me to adjust my tutoring lessons to the specific needs of each student. This is vital. Too often, we expect students to adjust to the curriculum. Instead, we should select a curriculum that adjusts to the student’s needs. I worked with a young student one year who had been held back in kindergarten. My first thought was, how can you fail kindergarten? Unfortunately, the student could not memorize the required number of words to be promoted to first grade. Vowel clustering does not use memorization. By the end of the year, the student was reading above his age level. In my new book, Why Can’t We Teach Children to Read? Oh, but Wait, We Can, I give several examples showing how I adapted vowel clustering to meet the needs of each individual student.



Free preview of Why Can't We Teach Children to Read: Oh, but Wait, We Can
 
“Do you think she can ever learn to read?”  She was fifteen years old when she first came to my reading clinic.  She had failed in school for nine straight years.  She was brought to my attention by a community worker who was searching for help.  The student could not read even simple one syllable words (cat, and, or the), did not know the lower-case alphabet (only the capital letters), and did not know any of the vowel sounds, not even the short a vowel sound.  After five minutes of working with the student, I said, “Yes, she can learn to read.” 
 
How could I be so sure?  Why did I think she could learn to read when everyone at her school had stated for the past nine years that she would never be able to learn to read?  Quite simply, because she knew the consonant letter sounds.  If the student could learn consonant sounds, then the student could learn vowel sounds.  All I needed to do was find a teaching method that would work.

In three-and-a-half years, I taught her to read.  How?  Vowel Clustering, the method that I teach in this book. 

Another student came to me after failing kindergarten.  He was back on track and reading above age level in less than one year.  How?  Vowel Clustering. 

A student who went all the way through first grade and did not learn one single word started to show improvement after only one week with vowel clustering. 

Two struggling students moved up two grade levels in reading after 48 hours of instruction, and two failing students moved up four grade levels in reading in one year with vowel clustering.

Vowel Clustering works with every student, regardless of age or reading problem.  Why?  Because vowel clustering teaches students to break words down into letter sounds and then put those sounds back together and read the word.  Vowel Clustering also teaches students to build words from a shared vowel sound.  Vowel Clustering works with the “oral language system.”  There is nothing to memorize—no weekly word lists, no rules.  Vowel Clustering also teaches reading fluency, comprehension, spelling, and word meanings. 
​
Vowel clustering has been tested and proven to work with struggling, at-risk, and failing students.  At my Reading Orienteering Club, we have had several students enter the program failing, then move up four grade levels in reading in one year using vowel clustering.  

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If you’d like a longer preview from the book, click here. 
 
If you need help in tutoring, please contact me.  I’m always happy to help.
 
It’s summer, but it is very important to keep children reading.  Check back often—I’ll try to find some ideas to help keep the “I’m bored” comments at bay.
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​Earlier Post: Helpful Hint on Tutoring to Help Students Overcome Learning Losses: #1
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Copyright © 2022 Elaine Clanton Harpine