What Is Special Education Tutoring and How Can It Help Your Child?

Special education tutoring is individualized academic instruction that is custom-tailored to your child’s specific needs. This type of tutoring is particularly important if your child has dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, ADHD, autism, or another learning disability. Unlike generic homework help, specialized academic and executive functioning tutoring uses research-based, multi-sensory techniques that are diagnostic and prescriptive, and individualized to your child’s specific strengths and needs. An initial evaluation prior to the start of the tutoring can help identify your child’s areas of need in reading, writing, math, organizational skills, or executive functioning skills.

What is special education tutoring?

Special ed tutoring uses a specialized approach to teaching that is individualized to your child’s needs. Your child will likely be evaluated first to assess their academic levels and areas of difficulty. Some children need help with reading, while others need assistance with writing, math, or study skills, and some need help with a combination of these skills. It is important that special education tutoring is always customized to your child’s specific and unique needs. Dyslexia tutoring, dysgraphia tutoring, dyscalculia tutoring, and executive functioning coaching can all be helpful, based on your child’s needs.

Reading Tutoring Using the Orton Gillingham Approach

Orton Gillingham tutoring can help your child develop stronger decoding, reading fluency, spelling, and phonological awareness skills. The Orton Gillingham technique is research-based and multi-sensory and is customized to your child’s individual reading and writing levels. Your child may begin at the foundational level, learning individual letters and their corresponding sounds, and will then learn how to blend those sounds together to form words through these Orton Gillingham lessons. From there, they may move onto more complex word patterns, learning to decode and spell words with:

• blends
• consonant digraphs
• vowel digraphs
• silent e patterns
• r-controlled words
• multi-syllabic word patterns
• prefixes
• roots

With Orton Gillingham tutoring, your child will likely also be taught specific Orton Gillingham spelling rules. These may include spelling rules such as:

• the ck/k rule, which indicates that if a word ends with the sound /k/, the student should use ck if the sound comes right after a short vowel. Otherwise, they should use use k.
• the tch/ch rule, which tells us that if a word ends with the sound /ch/, the student should use tch if the sound comes right after a short vowel. Otherwise, they should use ch.
• the dge/ge rule, which teaches a student that if a word ends with the sound /j/, the student should use dge if the sound comes right after a short vowel. Otherwise, they should use ge.

Specialized Orton Gillinhgam tutoring can teach your child other similar rules to help develop their spelling skills.

Specialized Reading Comprehension Tutoring

To develop your child’s reading comprehension skills, specialized tutoring might involve teaching your child active reading strategies. For example, they might learn to identify the topic, main idea, and important details when reading and learn to highlight them using three different colors. The topic is typically one, two, or three words describing the passage, and it should be highlighted in blue. The main idea is what the author is saying about the topic, and it should be highlighted in green. The important details are salient facts or pieces of information from the passage that should be highlighted in yellow. This type of strategy used in special education tutoring can help your child become an active, rather than a passive reader, and develop stronger reading comprehension skills.

Writing Support for Students with Learning Disabilities

With specialized writing tutoring, your child can develop stronger written language skills. They should learn to brainstorm, write, and self-check their thoughts on paper in an organized fashion. With specialized writing tutoring, your child might start by learning how to write a well-structured sentence and then move on to writing simple paragraphs, extended paragraphs, and five paragraph essays. They might learn to self-check their work using a checklist like COPS, which stands for capitalization, organization, punctuation, spelling.

Math Tutoring for Students with Learning Challenges

Specialized math tutoring can help your child build stronger math computation and word problem solving skills. They may learn to break down word problems during these math tutoring lessons, moving from language to arithmetic and back to language. For example, they might learn to read a word problem, circle the key words, then then break the problem into four steps: thought, or which operation is being used; relevant information; number sentence, and solution sentence. This type of specialized tutoring is particularly helpful for students who have dyscalculia.

At EBL Coaching, for our special education tutoring, we use research-based, multi-sensory techniques, including the Orton Gillingham method, to help your child develop and strengthen their academic skills. Our specialized tutoring is highly effective in helping students feel more confident and successful in school. In our extensive experience tutoring students in NYC and NJ with learning disabilities, individualized one-on-one instruction often leads to both academic improvement and increased self-confidence.

If you are a parent looking for special education tutoring in New York City or New Jersey, contact us today at www.eblcoaching.com. We use individualized, research-based instruction that is designed for students with dyslexia, ADHD, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, executive functioning challenges, and other learning disabilities.

Learn more about special ed tutoring programs at ADHD Tutoring Programs – EBL Coaching and Orton Gillingham Tutors NYC and NJ – EBL Coaching

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between one-on-one special education tutoring and homework help?
Special education tutoring typically involves an individualized tutoring plan that uses research-based, multi-sensory techniques tailored to your child’s individual needs. This type of specialized tutoring can focus on one skill, like reading, or a combination of skills if your child struggles with more than one skill. Homework help typically focuses just on completing homework assignments, not on academic remediation.

Is Orton Gillingham tutoring effective for dyslexia?
Yes, absolutely. The Orton Gillingham method is a highly effective approach for helping students with dyslexia develop their reading and spelling skills. At EBL Coaching, we have done extensive Orton Gillingham tutoring and have seen students make dramatic improvements using this technique.

How do I know if my child needs specialized one-on-one tutoring?
If your child continues to struggle academically despite in school-support and is showing signs of frustration and low self-esteem, you may want to consider specialized one-on-one tutoring for them.