Applying your Child’s Arkansas Education Freedom Account Funds to One-on-one Tutoring

Arkansas’ Education Freedom Account program gives parents autonomy in choosing how they want to use funds allocated to their child’s education. Some parents choose to use these funds for school supplies, a homeschool curriculum, or a private school for their child. Others choose to use these funds for one-on-one tutoring. If students have learning challenges, such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, or dyscalculia, or an attentional challenge like AHDH, specialized one-on-one tutoring can be incredibly beneficial. This tutoring can be provided in the following skill areas:

Reading

For students who have a learning disability such as dyslexia, applying your Arkansas EFA funds to specialized tutoring using the Orton Gillingham method can help your child excel in reading and spelling. Using this approach, students learn a structured, systematic, multi-sensory methodology for building stronger decoding and spelling skills. At a foundational level, students start by learning the names of the letters and their corresponding sounds, often in groups of five consonants and one short vowel. They then work on blending these sounds together to form basic two and three letter words, all using a multi-sensory approach and integrating tools such as colored sand, magnetic tiles, a mini whiteboard, and similar tools. From there, they learn how to read and spell words containing blends, consonant digraphs, vowel digraphs, silent e patterns, multi-syllabic word patterns, and more. The tutoring sessions can also integrate work on reading fluency and specific Orton Gillingham spelling rules to further develop students’ spelling skills.

A sample foundational Orton Gillingham lesson may include teaching your child an individual letter, like the letter f. The tutor might hold up a flash card that has the letter f on one side of it and a colorful picture of a fish on the back of it, serving as the key picture. The tutor would say aloud to the student, “This is the letter f, like fish, it makes the sound /f/.” The child would repeat that sequence back together with the tutor and then independently three times. Next, the tutor would model how to write the letter f, starting with skywriting, by saying aloud while writing the letter in the sky, “When we write the letter f, we go around, down, and across.” The student would then write the letter in the sky together with the tutor, then independently three times. Next, we would move onto colored sand writing, followed by exercises where we blend sounds together to form words, including previously taught sounds, to work on decoding words.

You can also apply your Arkansas AFA funds to help your child develop stronger reading comprehension skills with specialized reading comprehension tutoring. Your child will learn how to read various passages and highlight the topic, which is one, two, three words describing the passage in blue; the main idea, which is what the author is saying about the topic, in green; and the important details in yellow. They will also learn how to draw conclusions, make inferences, make predictions, and write written summaries based on what they read – skills that are key for thriving in school!

Writing

Writing is one of the most important skills for school success! You can use your Arkansas EFA funds to help your child build stronger writing skills with specialized writing tutoring. Some students begin at the sentence level, where they learn how to write a well-constructed sentence, then learn how to expand their sentences and work on writing compound and complex sentences.

When students are ready, they move onto learning how to write a simple paragraph, made of a topic sentence, three detail sentences, and a conclusion sentence. They learn how to brainstorm, write, and self-check their writing, and learn how to write four types of simple paragraphs: example, process, reason, and compare/contrast. From there, they move onto the extended paragraph, where they expand their writing by adding three supporting detail sentences after each detail sentence. They continue to work on brainstorming, writing, and self-checking their work, and also learn how to write example, process, reason, and compare/contrast extended paragraphs. At that point, students can learn how to write a five paragraph essay, which is made of an introduction paragraph comprised of an opening, lead-in, and thesis statement; three body paragraphs; and a conclusion paragraph.

Using your Arkansas EFA funds towards helping your child build stronger academic skills can help them excel in many different school subjects.