How can I use my child’s New Hampshire Education Freedom Account for one-on-one tutoring?
New Hampshire’s Education Freedom Account empowers you to use funds allocated to your child’s education to craft an academic plan that is most suitable for them. You may choose to use the funds for private school, a homeschool curriculum, or academic tutoring, amongst other educational options. If your child has a learning disability or ADHD, using your EFA funds towards specialized tutoring can help them excel in school. Tutoring can help with your child the following skills:
Decoding Words & Reading Comprehension
If your child has a language-based learning disability like dyslexia or has difficulty with reading, applying your EFA funds to specialized Orton Gillingham tutoring can help them build much stronger decoding and spelling skills. Using this method, students develop fundamental reading and writing skills with a multi-sensory approach. For children who need foundational skills building, they typically begin by learning the names of each letter and the corresponding sounds. After they have learned the names of the letters and all sounds, they typically move onto learning how to read words containing two and three letter words, followed by words with complex sounds and patterns, including blends, consonant digraphs, vowel pairs, silent e patterns, r-controlled patterns, multi-syllabic word patterns, prefixes, suffixes, roots, and so forth. Applying your child’s New Hampshire EFA funds to Orton Gillingham tutoring can help them tremendously with building their reading and spelling skills.
There are many research-based techniques that can be used to develop your child’s reading comprehension skills. For instance, your child can learn the tri-colored highlighting strategy for identifying the topic, main idea, and important details of various passages. They begin by learning to identify the topic of a passage, which is one, two or three words describing the passage, and highlight it in blue. Then they are taught to identify the main idea, or what the author is saying about the topic, and highlight it in green. Finally, they learn to identify the salient details from a passage and highlight them in yellow. From there, your child will learn to make inferences from information they read and create well-written summaries describing the passage. Using your New Hampshire EFA funds towards specialized reading comprehension tutoring can help your child process information they read much more effectively.
Writing
Many students struggle to express their thoughts on paper when writing. Students with a learning disability or ADHD often display significant challenges with this skill. Using your New Hampshire EFA funds towards one-on-one writing tutoring can help them build much stronger writing skills. Students are taught how to brainstorm, write, and self-check their ideas on paper in a structured manner, and they learn how to write well-written sentences, simple paragraphs, extended paragraphs, and five paragraph essays.
After learning how to write a well-written sentence, students typically move onto writing a simple paragraph, which is made of a topic sentence, three detail sentences, and a conclusion sentence. They are taught how to brainstorm, write, and self-check various types of simple paragraphs, including example, process, reason, and compare/contrast paragraphs. Once they have learned how to write a well-constructed simple paragraph, they move onto writing an extended paragraph, which expands the simple paragraph by adding three supporting detail sentences supporting each detail. When they are ready, your child will learn how to write a well-written five paragraph essay, which is made of an introduction paragraph (containing an opening, lead-in, and thesis statement), three body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph.
Individualized one-on-one writing tutoring using your child’s New Hampshire EFA funds can help them with many aspects of writing, including brainstorming their ideas to help plan out their thoughts. They also learn how to translate their brainstorm webs into well-constructed sentences and paragraphs when writing. Additionally, they learn how to self-evaluate their writing, correcting any mistakes, and building much stronger overall writing skills.
Math
Some students thrive with reading and writing but struggle with math. Specialized math tutoring can help students with all aspects of math, including number problems, fact fluency, and word problem solving. Using child’s New Hampshire EFA funds towards specialized math tutoring can help them build these critical skills. Once we have ensured that your child’s foundational math skills are intact, we work on teaching more complex math concepts, strengthening their fundamental math computation skills. Your child will also learn how to break down and solve math word problems; one method they may learn is the COINS strategy, which stands for circle, operation, information, number sentence, and solution sentence. Using this strategy, your child will learn to transition from language to arithmetic and back to language in order to effectively solve math word problems.
New Hampshire’s Education Freedom Account gives you the opportunity to craft an ideal education plan for your child. By integrating specialized one-on-one tutoring, you can help your child thrive with their reading, writing, and math skills.