ENGLISH LEARNERS & NEWCOMERS
We offer specific programs to accelerate students’ proficiency in English language development.
Research Based
TUTORWORKS pedagogical approach incorporates the best research-based practices for English language development for bilingual learners and newcomers. Following WestEd's Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) framework (qtel.wested.org) the TUTORWORKS approach features academic rigor, high expectations for student progress, quality interactions between instructors and students, and focus on English language development through quality curriculum and learning activities.
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Language First
TUTORWORKS uses English to teach English literacy and we combine a language immersion approach with the learning theory of apprenticeship. TUTORWORKS students learn language through carefully scaffolded practice of skills, progressing from easy and basic to challenging and complex language skills. Students use only the target language to learn phonemes and letter combinations, learn vocabulary, answer questions, write basic sentences, and to progressively build more complex English language skills in reading, writing and speaking.
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Data Driven
TUTORWORKS values the importance of carefully collected and analyzed data to guide our teaching and learning approaches. We collect pre-, mid- and post-class performance data on all students and have collected data on over 25,000 students in California since 2001. On average, TUTORWORKS students improve their literacy skills by 1 to 5% for every hour they spend in TUTORWORKS.
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DAILY DELIBERATE PRACTICE
MULTI-SENSORY TEACHING & FEEDBACK
DIRECT INSTRUCTION OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE
SMALL COHORTS
Deliberate practice includes targeted, explicit, and adaptive instruction featuring increasingly difficult tasks as students achieve mastery and provides immediate feedback to build fluency and automaticity in English reading and writing (Ericsson, K.A. 1993).
Our curriculum provides rich auditory and visual supports, both word-level and text-level skill development, clear instructional objectives, highly motivational structures, and embedded assessment (Goldberg, 2006).
Our instructors' direct instruction is aided by computer-based adaptive learning curriculum and provides tailored practice of word-level skills related to phonemic and phonological awareness (Goldenberg, 2004).
Students are grouped in small cohorts with the same teacher over long periods of time to develop caring relationships that are motivational and provide supportive and daily feedback (August & Shanahan, 2006).