After-school tutoring is an excellent option for students who need extra support. There’s no doubt that receiving reading intervention after school (or, for the early birds, before school) works wonders for the struggling reader. But this is asking a lot of young minds.

Navigating the school days takes plenty of mental and emotional stamina, and it’s no small thing to conclude (or precede) the school day with an hour of literacy instruction. We’re very conscious of this at Redwood, and we’re intentional about ensuring after-school tutoring doesn’t feel like school. Redwood sessions are fun. And no homework! No grades! But it’s certainly still work. And for the dyslexic brain, it’s the hardest kind of work there is.

Why In-School Dyslexia Tutoring Might Be the Better Option

After-school literacy instruction works – we’ve been doing it for years, and our students are achieving exceptional growth in a supportive environment that normalizes dyslexia. But occasionally students will express a sentiment along the lines of, “My tired brain just made it through a WHOLE DAY OF SCHOOL – do I really have to do more work now?”

There’s another option.  

Whenever possible, getting high-dosage tutoring during the school day is optimal. It allows students to use their best energy during the hours when they’re already focused on learning, rather than those post-3:00 pm hours when the mind longs for leisure. If students receive high-quality, evidence-based instruction during the school day, this frees up their outside-of-school time for regulation, social connection, and extracurriculars.

Advocating for In-School Tutoring

It takes some effort to pull this off, but we want to help you make it happen. Here’s what it looked like for me:

We started the advocacy process in the middle of my daughter’s first-grade year. It took six months to get her IEP in place, then another six months to determine what the district could do and what her public school could provide. Not a fast process. For six months she received the intervention called for in her IEP, but she wasn’t making much progress.

Next, we made some requests. (Even if you’re blessed with a healthy, nurturing school district, your persistent – persistent! – advocacy is often what determines whether or not your child receives needed support.) We asked for an assistive technology evaluation and requested that they allow her to miss Spanish every day and spend that time in the library working virtually with a Redwood instructor.

Partnering with Schools for Effective Dyslexia Intervention

We didn’t ask the district to pay for these sessions. Redwood intervention is free for our daughter – due to her parents being the founders. But otherwise we definitely would have. I would have used my daughter’s data as evidence that she wasn’t receiving the right kind of intervention. I may also have asked if I could split the cost with the school, or called my insurance to get the specifics of what they will and won’t reimburse us for.

The Impact of Redwood's In-School Literacy Instruction

Redwood partners with some excellent school districts in Chicago, and we’ve seen how much progress students are making when they have intensive literacy instruction embedded into their school days. One student, a very lovable 7th grader, had received reading remediation for years, but it wasn’t the right fit. He was working hard, but not making enough progress to close the literacy gap. We determined a speech-to-print approach might be better suited for his learning style, so he began virtual instruction with one of our SPELL-Links™ instructors, and since then his growth has skyrocketed. With one year of instruction, his reading level advanced three years. At another one of our partner schools, a fourth grader told us during her initial assessment, “Oh, I can’t read.” Now, after just three months of instruction, she’s reading full sentences. She’s getting small-group instruction four times a week during the school day, having fun and growing in confidence.

These students are growing as readers during the hours their brains are already conditioned for the demands of school, and this preserves their afternoons and evenings for play and rest.  

How to Start the Process for In-School Dyslexia Support

If you’d like to get your child virtual Redwood services during the school day, we would love to partner with you. Give us a call at (773) 309-4524 or send us an email: jillian@redwoodliteracy.com.

Redwood’s Admissions Process

Every client is a VIP. We’ll walk you through each step of the admissions process and find a schedule and program that best fits your child’s needs. We’ll conduct baseline assessments to determine where your student is starting and what curriculum best aligns with their needs. We’ll begin with three to four months of instruction with regular progress monitoring, then readminister baseline assessments to see if the curriculum is the right fit, highlight where they’re thriving, measure their rate of progress, and notice where they’re stuck and in need of extra support. From there, we’ll set goals for the next quarter.

A Recap of After-School Literacy Instruction

If at 3:00pm the struggling reader in your life still has some mental and emotional energy in reserve, after-school tutoring could be a great fit. But if that’s not the case, if the school day leaves them a little depleted, please reach out to us – we want to help your child get the right instruction at the right time.

Ready to get started?

Click here to schedule a placement consultation for your child. The data report from this assessment will help you advocate for daytime intervention for your child when talking with their school.