Writing tutoring the Right Way

At the Chicago Home Tutor we understand that it is important that all students can effectively communicate and express their ideas in writing.  Our writing tutors can help each student make progress toward this goal.

For our younger students who may have motor difficulties which impede handwriting, we use strategies such as Handwriting Without Tears and raised paper to support these students. For students with disabilities that may make legible handwriting difficult or impossible, we work with assistive technology to develop content writing skills. For more complex motor difficulties, we can help you determine if it may be necessary to refer to an occupational therapist.

For younger students who can write legibly, we use our early literacy programs and methods like Shared Rime to help them learn to spell more accurately. We also help students to produce more content and write more fluently and connect reading to writing by writing responses to texts we have read.  We also begin to teach them important self-sufficiency skills with strategies like the Cover, Copy and Compare Method.

As students master spelling and begin producing more content, we start to focus on organization of thoughts and producing higher-quality content. Here we often combine writing instruction with executive functioning strategies to help students with idea production, organization, and managing the steps and parts of longer projects like five paragraph essays and research papers. We also teach students to become more independent by analyzing the quality of their own writing.  Students learn to relate higher level writing and reading skills like reading a passage and effectively developing concise written main ideas and summaries.