Writing Tutoring

Writing Tutoring

Improve your writing skills

As Learning Specialists, we are more than simply writing tutors. One of my areas of passion and specialty is teaching students the art and structure of writing. Writing well is a complex process, and in order for it to be effective and convey our intended message, it involves many intentional steps. Often in school, students are assigned many writing assignments, but they are not explicitly taught how to do it successfully. Additionally, a critical component that is largely missing in traditional classrooms is immediate feedback (and often any feedback at all.) Students have to wait weeks, sometimes longer, to get feedback on their work. By then, they certainly don’t want to make any changes to it! (And who can blame them?)

When students struggle with a subject, it often leads to a strong dislike and resistance to that subject, and writing is no exception. We can change this mindset; all students can learn to write effectively with the right instruction and with the immediate, specific, and constructive feedback they’ll receive when they’re in tutorial sessions.

Instructional Approach

Our lessons are explicit, systematic, and highly scaffolded to start. This means that initially, we give students a lot of supports (scaffolding) to help them be successful. This includes sentence stems and starters, graphic organizers, and lots of examples of good writing or mentor texts. We also teach students how to use their technology such as voice to text more efficiently, format documents, and much more. These scaffolds are gradually removed, and as students gain confidence and skills, they move away from the more formulaic structures provided until finally, they are able to stand on their own as they develop and refine their voice.

We utilize a student’s homework and classwork as much as possible to teach these skills and strategies, supplementing with our own materials when needed. Students are assigned plenty of writing assignments; let us teach them the skills necessary to develop into confident and effective writers and communicators.