For my "academic life skills and accountability" students, I typically meet with them twice a week for a 30 minute session so I can check in with them on a customized routine that typically contains elements such as:

• looking for missing assignments and following up on them

• help drafting emails to teachers

• looking at upcoming assignments, estimating how long they will take, and making a plan for when to do them

• cleaning/organizing backpack and papers

• cleaning/organizing their workspace at home

• discussing study strategies for upcoming tests

• tracking actions related to other personal goals

If there is extra time, we will sometimes get started on dreaded assignments to get the ball rolling OR do snippets of subject tutoring in Spanish or Language Arts.

New tools and technologies like ChatGPT may seem scary, but learning how to use new tools is a great skill to have. It's not a matter of IF you will use them, but WHEN and HOW you will use them. I can coach you when and how to use these tools wisely and proactively.

The key is to use tools like ChatGPT effectively while still keeping your own writing and thinking skills sharp. ChatGPT is like a helpful friend, but it shouldn't replace your ability to think critically and write well.

My special writing curriculum, which I've been developing since 2010, works really well with ChatGPT. I'll teach you how to write clear questions or prompts for ChatGPT so you can get the best answers. We'll also learn how to work together with the machine to make our writing even better.

I like to use ChatGPT to create just-right writing exercises for you. These exercises help with things like editing and drafting conclusions. It's all about using this tool in a smart and thoughtful way to make your writing skills even stronger.

My approach makes the "invisible steps" of writing visible, so it particularly resonates with math/science types because it is very explicit and logical.  It also works well with students with ADHD, students who have anxiety about writing, and for students who have difficulty with elaboration (it can feel like pulling teeth to get them to write more than one sentence.)  I can also apply these approaches to make school assignments more approachable.

Typically my composition program follows a sequence like this:

• Throughout their work with me, I ask my students to learn how to type with the correct fingers on their own time using a website like https://www.typingclub.com/.

• We start with divergent thought activities ("Write a huge bullet point list you can of all the animals you can think of") and organizational activities ("re-arrange that list into categories and subcategories using copy/paste and the indent feature") of increasing complexity.

• We further broaden and expand thought by practicing the art of asking many different types of questions (based on observation, prior knowledge, the five senses, past and future, follow-up questions, etc).

• Throughout this process, students are encouraged to transcribe longer and longer phrases from speech to text.  When my student says a really good word or phrase, I pause their flow of speech, then repeat their phrase back to them verbatim and say "write that down".  Over time I help them less with this as they get better at keeping track of their verbalizations.  Words, sentences, and phrases are all recorded in bullet point form so that students feel free to record their thoughts in process, rather than feeling like they need to form a perfect thought fully in their mind before they can commit it to text.  This frees up a lot of mental real estate.

• Students practice converting their incomplete phrases and thoughts into complete and smooth sentences.

• At a certain point of comfort and familiarity with these tools and strategies, we move into convergent thought/analysis/synthesis activities, which closely follow that student's unique needs and preferences.  We can go absolutely anywhere from here. 

Who this is for

This material is crucial for some, but beneficial for all.  In particular, this material is well suited for students with diagnosed or suspected dyslexia, persistent spelling problems, or fatigue while reading, and follows best practices outlined by the International Dyslexia Association.

Part one: Systematic Phonics Instruction with Mental Representations

During this phase, we work with real and "nonsense" words, teaches concepts that apply to about 80% of written English spelling.

1. Systematic review of English sounds and symbols under "normal" circumstances.  (Emphasis here on vowel sounds: short, long, diphthong, schwa)

2. Explicit instruction in about ten statistically significant and highly consistent spelling rules, including a discussion about syllable types.  

3. Drills that emphasize spatial sequencing and modification of letters and sounds using mental representations.  

4. Discussion of multisyllable words and drilling of common affixes like "tion" and "ous".

Part two: Morphemes, Word Roots, and Word History

In this section we exclusively use real words, teaching concepts that apply to about 15% of written English spelling.

1.  We comb through the Fry sight word list for high-frequency words that do not fit the rules outlined during part one, explore and discuss why this is the case, and then drill the words in logical groups.  A lot of the time, these "rule breakers" fall into two categories:

   1. something involving the history of English and the ways that pronunciation and dialect change across time and space, or

   2. something involving word roots or meaning, much like we have already been studying during our warm-ups (eg, the "g" is silent in "sign" but voiced in "signature" because they share a common meaning, which has to do with markings, or, the words "two" and "twin" share the same PIE root having to do with duality).

2. We systematically learn about 40 Greek and Latin root words in a spelling and vocabulary context.

3. We discuss the process of researching a word's history and roots.

I can help students both with literal comprehension skills (eg due to verbal processing issues) and with more advanced literary analysis skills.

Literal Comprehension Skills

Some students have trouble processing/absorbing the literal meaning of the words on the page. These students can beautifully read a sentence like "The bunny ran down the street" out loud, but when asked, "What animal was on the street?" they might say, "A cat".   This is a stark example, and many kids become quite skilled at masking their difficulties here (e.g. through parroting the language of the question), but basically, they don't automatically make a  "movie in their mind" out of the words.  I am trained in a program called Visualizing and Verbalizing, which is a great fit for these kinds of students and makes a huge positive difference because it systematically trains students to make clear, automatic, and vivid "mental movies".

Literary Analysis Skills

Most students have difficulty with traditional literary analysis at some point. My approach helps students to approach literary analysis as a structured process of discovery, with special emphasis on characterization and literary devices.  Here are the core steps in their most basic form:

1. What do you observe about this passage, character, etc.?

2. Turn your observations into questions.

3. What is the most likely answer to your question, given everything else that you know?

There's a lot we can do using this foundation!

For students who need explicit support to understand and implement basic English grammar, here is the sequence I typically follow:

• Parts of speech (verb, noun, adjective, adverb, pronoun, conjunction)

• Parts of a sentence (subject, verb, object)

• Types of clauses (independent and subordinate)

• Types of conjunctions (coordinating and subordinating)

Using this knowledge, my grammar students practice basic sentence diagramming and learn to edit their sentences into complete sentences (rather than run-ons or fragments).

I can help students to write their fantasy novel, memoir, or poetry collection as an enrichment activity.

I can teach Spanish as an independent study topic or tutor concurrently to a class up to the AP Literature level (year 5).   I think that Spanish I is typically taught in a counterproductive way so I always appreciate the opportunity to give students a "pre-Spanish" foundation that sets them up to be less confused in class.

Your student + me + a prep workbook = encouragement and consistency!

I help AP students get the most out of their test prep workbooks, offering custom tips and encouragement along the way.

Overwhelmed by the college application process?  I can help you keep track of what to do when while also coaching you through the essay writing process.