My Tutoring Experience Using the Fundamentals Reading Program
Shaundra Cartwright
EDU: Phonics Based Reading and Decoding
Instructor Jennifer Hanson
October 22, 2013

In our second week of class we are asked to choose a student to tutor with the Fundamentals Reading Program. We are asked to pick a student from age’s five to seven and only one student. The Fundamentals Reading program is an intensive systematic phonics learn to read program that will improve comprehension, spelling and a child’s penmanship. This program is well-suited for absolutely every age group and it is an effective solution for any reading problem (actionreading.com). Formulated for use with learners from preschool through adult ages, this program is the key to learning to read the English language in a much easier way. Children struggle with comprehension the most and this program helps to build on being able to understand what you are reading. Our students that we will be tutoring should go from knowing little to nothing about reading to being more knowledgeable and finally able to hold their own in the classroom. Since I have been a substitute teacher at my daughter’s school for the past two years, I reached out to my friends there for a student to tutor. I let them know I wanted to tutor a student they had who had trouble with learning to read and write so they could really benefit from being tutored. My student’s name is Dustin and he is five years old and in kindergarten, and his teacher told me he didn’t really get anything from the time they spent on learning letters or writing. When I first met him I realized that the only problem he really has is being able to concentrate and he forgets really easy what you are talking to him about, so we have to use alliteration throughout our sessions. In starting off with the first cd for our first tutoring session in the first week of this assignment, we are asked to take out the card with number one on it and begin with just the side that shows the pictures, so that we can learn the sounds. We started off with the apple card and went all the way through until we reached the zipper card at the end. I added a little to what we were doing by saying the sounds and clapping my hands, and this seem to add even more fun to what we were doing, and I also explained to Dustin that all letters but a,e,i,o,u were consonants and those mentioned before were vowels. After that we concentrated on the apple sound and the nail sound and worked on this over and over. We went over and over this from a sound to n sound but Dustin had a very hard time remembering and wanted to say the m sound for everything. After that we listened to track 4 of the first cd which is the singing review and we cut apart each picture card from card 1. My second tutoring session with Dustin began with track five of the first cd and we had to start off by putting our cards in aah-buh-cuh order, and Dustin seem to have a lot of trouble being able to do this step, so I had to help a lot. After we completed this step we began putting cards together to make words. Our first cards we had to put together were the soap card, itch card, and the tooth card and I had Dustin place these left to right as the cd instructed me to. We said the sounds together and slid the sounds together to hear the word sit. We followed with the can card, apple card, and tooth card, to make the word cat. We worked together and made a few more words from the cd for him to say and we continued with this through track six. I started to use m and m’s that I call genius beans as a treat for every sound that Dustin remembers, and what do you know, a big hit. Our third tutoring session began with track seven of the first cd and we began with writing. The first page we had to work on from the workbook was page one which contained the A and N letters. From there we preceded with page two, three, four, five, and six from the workbook, and I instructed Dustin as a beginning writer to use the sloping line when writing his letters as the lady instructed from the DVD when we had to watch it. This activity took quite a while since Dustin is a beginning writer and struggles with simple directions, but I always make a point to encourage everything he accomplishes. After we had completed all of these pages from the workbook, I got out card three for Dustin and me, so we could play the game with the footprints called the first steps to reading. To start off, we began with saying all of the sounds for each picture starting with rope and ending with zipper. This game went over well and I believed it helped Dustin a great deal with being able to say the sounds over and over and I noticed they began to stick in his head a little more by the end. To end this tutoring session we completed pages seven, eight, nine and ended our tutoring session for that day. We started off our fourth tutoring session by putting our cards in aah-buh-cuh order and I played the engine song, and helped Dustin along as the song played the sounds for the engine pulls the train. We practiced this song twice just to get him familiar with it and to expect it later. In moving on we started working on the P sound and we did page ten in the workbook. We worked on putting pictures together to make words again and I explained to Dustin that we always go left to right and we say the sounds and slide them together. We then began to work on page eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen from the workbook. Dustin and I had the discussion as well about capital letters at the beginning of the sentence and for names. We took a break because he is five and his attention is only so long and we played game for on the computer keyboard (this seem to confuse my little guy for a little bit), so we went back to our cards and went over the sounds again for the letters. After we finished playing the game we went on to work on pages fifteen and sixteen. I helped Dustin to write his name with the slant that is talked about from the cd and showed on the workbook pages and I had him only print the letters that he remembered the sounds for. We went back over the pictures to say the sounds together and he is struggling still with remembering all of the sounds, so I just repeated this step with him over and over and left it at that for the day. The next time we met, I began the Bingo game from card six with him and I notice that he did better with recognizing his letters than he did from the previous session we had. I am having to go a little slower probably than normal with Dustin because he seems to struggle so much, so we haven’t got to the end of disc two. I went over page eighteen in depth with him multiple times and we just began page nineteen, I asked him to identify any words he might recognize and we talked about these being sight words, and we are going to finish this on Tuesday. I am trying to get him to the point of moving quickly but I want to show him patience and understanding as well, because I hope to make a difference in his being able to read. This tutoring sessions for the second week started off with Dustin and I finishing card seven from disc two, and review with page twenty three from the booklet and page twenty four, where we went over the th, sh, ch, wh, which is part of learning graphemes. When we completed this, we put in disc three and I asked Dustin to once again put out the cards in aah-buh-cuh order, and we also got out our short cut cards for the exercise. The first word I asked Dustin to put together is fin and at first he was trying to pick them out three cards instead of just two and we had to go over the short cut cards again because he seems to struggle with trying to use them right now. The next word we were asked to put together was shop, and then shut and I of course, had to help Dustin along because he still is learning at a slower rate than most kindergarteners, but he is doing better at remembering the basics. We got to move on with a hard word this time and it was chicken. Dustin did go right for the chair card but wasn’t sure with the other cards, so we looked at the short cut cards and went over the individual sounds of them together and we then picked out the other two cards needed to make the word chicken. The next word I had Dustin put together was the word quick and he really did well on that word by sounding out all the sounds on the card. After completing this exercise, we went on to page twenty five in the workbook, which was called syllables tic-tac- toe. I made sure Dustin said all sounds and not just try to guess a word by the picture. When he is saying all sounds he is quicker to get things right, and when he sounded out the word fantastic which was broken up into syllables, he said it perfectly! He is doing well with phonological awareness and I am so proud of how hard he is working and I am beginning to see improvement. I had him to clap his name and tell me how many syllables in his name and he at first said one because he doesn’t fully understand what syllables mean even though I have explained this to him, so I thought it was best we take some extra time with syllables so Dustin understood a little better. I just added a little to the exercise from the disc and we clapped the name of everyone in his class and I had him say how many syllables in each name, and then we played tic-tac-toe with Sh and Ch. When we had completed a few tic-tac-toes, we went on to page twenty-six and I had Dustin try to read the words first before we looked at the pictures. This was a very hard exercise for him with the sentences and it went very slowly, but patience makes a difference and helps Dustin to feel comfortable and he worked hard to get through it, and then we worked on page twenty-seven, where it was more review with the Sh, Ch, Th, Wh, and he didn’t have too much trouble because he was just adding this letters to make words. Playing game twelve was the last thing we worked on for this tutoring session and it was called Two for Ones and it was more practice with the Sh, Ch, Th, Wh. All of the practice we had this round with learning those sounds as made a difference with Dustin and by the end he was doing really well. Our second tutoring session this week started off with page twenty-eight from the Fundamentals Reading book and it was really hard for Dustin, because he was a little scared by having to fill in the blanks to make the words this time instead of just seeing the pictures with the words out beside. We worked slowly through it, and moved on to card eleven with sound prints review. In doing this review Dustin had to realize that letters represent sounds and sounds are what they need to make words, not the letter names. We completed card eleven and worked on pages twenty-nine and thirty, which was the Ar and Or sounds, and we reviewed the er, ir, ur sounds, on page thirty-one. I gave Dustin a little brain break at that point and we had a snack for added brain power. In getting back to work we went on the Roman March with card thirteen and reviewed previously learned sounds, and this was a popular game with Dustin. The added games has helped our process be fun and he is learning, maybe not as fast as others, but I see more improvement each time. We moved on to pages thirty-two and thirty-four in the workbook (I will have to repeat these pages with Dustin because they were a bit much for his level) and went through game fourteen where we talked about the vowels. We also were able to finish page thirty-five which contained ai, ay, A, and this was all we were able to make it through with the session. Our third meeting started with me explaining about vowels again and we listened to the Never Forget Vowels song and we worked on page thirty-six and card fourteen. I went slowly with card fourteen because I wanted to make sure Dustin realized that vowels have two sounds and you can’t make a word without a vowel sound. With this exercise we clapped and drummed the vowels and much more, and we had a very fun time with vowels. It was then on to the Billy Green song and page thirty-seven from the workbook for vowel practice. Dustin and I went over page thirty-eight slowly because it contained so many words to read and some of them were a bit long, for example, one of the words was yesterday. Dustin is doing very well in my opinion to be a struggling kindergartener with learning to read but some words like that are just hard. He was able to pick out the days of the week from that page though by his self. After that we took a little tour back to card fourteen with the Aah-Buh-Cuh order song. The next hour went worked on pages thirty-nine, forty, forty-one, forty-two, forty-three and he did well with his writing on these pages. By the time we finished, Dustin was tired and his attention wasn’t really on what we were doing so I ended this session at this point, everything is taking us probably a little longer than most and I don’t won’t to push him to the point where he is not having fun with learning. Our last meeting for this week we started with the Bumblebee and McVowel songs (he really enjoys all of the songs from the program) and we played the game Buzzin’ the Vowels from card eight. Dustin had more fun getting to start off with a game so he just jumped right in. This is a big step for him because he is so shy about trying things because he thinks he will always be wrong. This game was to master the short and long vowel sounds so I decided to play with him a few times for better memorization. We moved on to work on pages forty-four, forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven, and rounded it up with page forty-eight out of the work book, and this all consisted of vowel practice, we didn’t completely finish each page but I did enough with him, where he does understand vowels much better. I had a little more time to work with him this week because we are on fall break, but with him being so young, I try to give him the breaks where I thought he needed it and didn’t make him do all of the really long pages because of his concentration level. Starting the first tutoring session for the third week, Dustin and I went back to card fourteen for a little more fun practice with vowels. We hadn’t seen each other for four days, so Dustin had forgotten what vowels were and I had to go back through with my explanation of vowels and the purpose they served. We clapped through the vowels many times and did the toe touches (which he loved), because Dustin does have a very hard time with remembering things and repetition helps a lot with him. I also went back over our aah-buh-cuh cards to keep those fresh in his mind even though the cds for this week did not call for you to do that. After we had our review, we started page forty-nine that contained Y review and more writing practice. I used what was taught about Y being the cousin to the vowels and called the vowels brothers and sisters, and when I use examples like that, Dustin seems to understand a little better. We moved on to work on page fifty and Dustin struggled to read the sentences, so to help him, I broke some of the words down into syllables and he still had some trouble but he was able to figure out words like funny and story. I had to do the same things with him as we worked on page fifty-one. Dustin didn’t do too well with comprehending what he read from the little story from this page, so we had to read it a few times before he could answer the questions. At this point, I gave him a little brain break because he loses interest so easily once things get harder for him and he gets a little frustrated. As we got back to work, Dustin was happy because we were going to play a game with card sixteen. After we finished playing card sixteen with all of the review, we started with page fifty-three with another story page. Again like before with the other page, it took us a little while to get through it but it helps Dustin when I break up the harder words into syllables. We moved on to page fifty-four and worked our way through this page and I explained to Dustin sometimes the vowels do not follow the usual rules using the fight scenario with the outlaws that was used on the disc. We started page fifty-five but we only made it through to sentence three and I had to let Dustin go because I could tell he had enough for that day. Our second session for the week started with our Outlaw song sung by Sherriff Kindly to go back over vowels when they act up, and I have to say this song was a big hit with Dustin. We went over the rest of page fifty-five that we didn’t get finished from the last time, and we did jumping jacks while saying the vowels for extra practice. After doing that we worked on pages fifty-six through fifty-nine together with the stories and sentence questions. Dustin worked really hard through these pages and they were tough for him so we took a little brain break with a snack. When we came back to our work, we began with page sixty, which contained the long I sounds and words like eight. We always say each word at the bottom of pages together first and then I have him go through and say the words by himself. When we started page sixty-one, where you had to write the sounds on the line, Dustin did really good with this and enjoyed doing it. After we finished that page, we worked on pages sixty-two through sixty-five and we didn’t quite finish because it is slow going through everything. I don’t pressure Dustin to work quickly because I know he won’t be beneficial to him and I really want our tutoring sessions to help him understand reading and writing much better. The third tutoring session with Dustin started off with page sixty-six. I didn’t have him go back and finish anything we left from last time because I believe you just have to know what to push and what to shorten for some kids. After we finished page sixty-six, we went on to page sixty-seven and we are learning about the long o sounds, we went on to page sixty-eight where Dustin was able to get in some writing practice. Hurrah! Dustin was super excited because when he finished with that page we listened to the Days of Olde song as we started work on pages sixty-nine through seventy-two. At this point we took a brain break with a snack, and I have noticed that with my student this is a hit and it makes him work better when we come back to our work. For the next forty-five minutes we worked on pages seventy-three thorough seventy-six and ended with the Pirate Pete song. In moving on we got our cards and put all cards out letter side up. Dustin and I did the ABC race, since this helps with Dustin’s memorization we played a few more times, and went over all of the rest of the cards and made a few words that Dustin could put together like boy, joy, enjoy, and different other word families. After completing those we moved on to page seventy-eight which started another story page. Game time after that with game nine called the Surprise Ship. The last of our session, we worked on pages eighty through eighty-three and we didn’t quite finish page eighty-three and I ended our time together for that day. Our forth tutoring session got to start off with game card fifteen called ringing sounds and I played this game with him three times because as I have said before, Dustin works better with remembering if we do something’s over and over. After playing, we worked on pages eighty-four and eighty-five and we listed to the Ringing Song, and moved on to pages eighty-six through eighty-seven which was going over ce, ci, cy. Dustin is moving slowly through the stories and some I just choose to have him echo read because it helps him more to hear it read first then for him to struggle through it. We took a brain break and then began work on pages eighty-eight through ninety and we listened to the Breaking the Rules song. Dustin is struggling with understanding ce, ci, cy, ge, gi, gy so we worked on a little more practice with that before moving on to game ten called the Treasure Hunt. We worked on the story of Marge and her father on page ninety-one together, and then I had Dustin work on the Toe Touch vowels sounds again with me to make sure he remembered what we had learned and went on to pages ninety-two and ninety-three. In finishing our last session of the week together, we only made it through page ninety-four, and I didn’t feel that it would be beneficial to Dustin to push anything more on him. He is trying to take in a lot of information and with him being a struggling student in that area anyway, I just work in how much I think he can take at a time. This reading program has been easy but also extremely tough for my student as well. He is five with a very short attention span and didn’t always want to have to work on things. As teachers, we have to make adjustments along the way and this program helps with putting that in action. I had to make changes in some places and cut some things short just depending on how Dustin was for that day. Dustin started out not knowing any of his letters, or being able to write at all and working with him throughout this program, I have saw how much he has accomplished and his teacher says she can tell as well. No matter what I had to do, Dustin has made improvement and come a very long way, and the Fundamentals Reading program made a tremendous difference in his life.

References: Actionreadingprogram.com Fundamentals material http://www.atozphonics.com/phonicsdefinition.html