Using Volunteer Mothers to Tutor Poor Readers Within a School Context

Abstract

Ten Year 3 children from a Sydney primary school, identified by testing as the poorest readers out of the five classes in the grade, received remedial tutoring using a set of highly structured remedial materials. The tutoring involved twenty one volunteer mothers, and each mother worked with a child for two sessions a week to allow the child to receive four sessions of tutoring each week. The tutoring sessions involved (1) drill of single sounds and digraphs (2) tutoring and practice of word attack skills, and (3) reading practice using an appropriate reader, with verbal comprehension questions relevant to the reader. The volunteers kept records of each child’s performance during each session. After an average of one term of tutoring, the children demonstrated considerable improvement on test gains in comparison with gains made by a control group from the same classes.