My tutoring and consulting business is called 21st Century Tutoring & Consulting for a reason; in this era, we have 21st-century students and we need to be 21st-century teachers, using not only technology tools, but offering activities that ensure our students are engaging in critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. Just like any tutor, I help students with their work from school, but I also assess all of my students, then offer project-based activities to help them in the area they need to strengthen. The photos below show some of the activities and resources I have used.
Reading
I use a variety of resources to help students with reading…including online reading passages with questions and writing prompts, iPad apps, printed passages, magazines, and books.
Reading a-z has so many amazing leveled books, both fiction and non-fiction. After reading this particular book, my student did a slideshow about the beaches and even brought back a bottle of black sand from Hawaii to show me!
TweenTribune is not that well known, but they have a great selection of articles that you can assign to classes or individual students, and there is a critical thinking question that would make a great writing prompt.
An iPad app called “Reading Comprehension…it comes with a few free passages and then you can purchase more if desired. Each passage has an assessment and students can look back in the text as much as they want.
While working as an RtI teacher, I used these articles for kids from The Denver Post, sponsored by Newspaper in Education. Great for guided reading groups and individual students!
Another Newspaper in Education resource for reading instruction!
I love, love Newsela! Excellent articles that kids can highlight and annotate, then take a quiz and respond to writing prompts.
The Critical Reading iPad app from The Critical Thinking Co. is perfect for teaching kids how to find text evidence.
The Critical Thinking Co. also offers reading passages; you can subscribe and receive free weekly passages.
Just a few of the books I’ve used with my tutoring students.
An outstanding fantasy book for intermediate grades; highly recommend!
Excellent fantasy trilogy for intermediate readers!
There aren’t that many dystopian novels for intermediate students, but this one of them…a must read!
Many of my students have actually preferred non-fiction books over fiction.
I have always used picture books with my intermediate students. This one is a gem, and has some sophisticated vocabulary words!
