Elementary School Archives

Partial Products Multiplication

November 6, 2023 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

Do you remember fourth grade? You were not yet confronting middle school angst but no longer a little kid in your elementary school. You likely were not worried about your overflowing inbox, catching up on laundry, or figuring out dinner plans back then. What were you worried about? Think back. Ahh, that’s right. Your math homework. You likely just learned how to multiply two digit numbers. Multiply, carry, multiply, add, shift to the left, add, repeat. So many steps and, while it got the job done, you had no idea what you were doing or why you were doing it. It was just the way to solve multiplication problems. The standard algorithm. And, for something so complicated, once you memorized the computation patterns, it was pretty simple. No one mentioned partial products or alternative algorithms at all.

Fast forward a few decades and here you are, helping your fourth grader with their math homework. Multiplying two two digit numbers? Simple! You pull out a pencil and paper and start your standard algorithm tutorial. Multiply, carry, multiply, add, shift to the left, add, repeat. “Why do you do that?” they ask as you work through the steps with arrows and plus signs sketched in concert with your lecture. Why do you do that? No one ever covered that in the first round of standard algorithm instruction. You don’t have the answer you need to explain the complicated iteration of steps or why it works or how to figure out when it does not work. It was just the way you learned. Your math instruction focused on efficiency rather than conceptual understanding. Your fourth grader takes the pencil and demonstrates partial products multiplications. They draw a rectangle, call it an array, and label each side. They then divide their numbers up by place value, end up with four equations in the rectangle and add their totals together to arrive at a final answer. It worked, sure, but is it the most efficient? Five minutes and four extra steps later, they just arrived at the answer they could have gotten using the standard algorithm you modeled.

Has Math Really Changed?

Has math really changed that much over the years? The long and short of it is no. Math has not dramatically changed since you were in school. Fourth graders still, sometimes begrudgingly, learn to multiply and divide. Scrap paper and times tables are still important elements of the upper elementary school math experience. And, while on the surface, solving using the standard algorithm and solving using partial products and an array seem wildly dissimilar, conceptually, they fall along the same continuum in computational understanding.

Using the standard algorithm, you learned that to multiply is just an annotated version of what your child is doing in solving by place value on an array. Their computational instruction has slowed down and added this important stepping-stone in their math learning journey to ensure that they know why they are doing when multiplying.

Partial Products

There are a few important reasons to learn multiplication using partial products and a visual model. First and foremost, it supports a strong conceptual understanding of the place value element of multiplication. When you learned to use the standard algorithm and shift your second row of numbers over to the left, it is likely that no one explicitly reinforced that “the shift” actually symbolized the multiplication of ten in the overall problem. When that concept is not developed, it is incredibly challenging to conceptualize the magnitude of the numbers in a problem. Dividing numbers into place value using an array helps ground the abstract concept of magnitude in a very tangible construct through the use of the array. A rectangular array, when set up to solve a multiplication problem, is nothing more than an area problem. Young mathematicians can see the magnitude of each piece of the multiplication equation as they multiply one side of the array by the other side, often on graph paper, in a set up that is just an extension of their previous geometry work. Additionally, this visual conceptualization of multiplication lends itself to understanding more efficient and flexible computation strategies. For example, using an array to show that 3×4 and 6×2 are the exact same area helps illustrate the commutative property and supports understanding why doubling and halving when multiplying leads to the same product.

As students grow in their mathematical development and expand their computation fluency, arrays become more abstract and less representational, serving as more of a graphic organizer for solving than as a direct representation of area. At that point, students may shift to using the standard algorithm entirely, now coupled with an appreciation for what each step means in the greater solution and an expectation for the magnitude of their product. However, arrays will continue to be an important component of their mathematical trajectory and an essential building block of understanding. As students move from whole number work to fractions computation, the array lends its support again, providing a meaningful context for fraction multiplication and division.

Supporting Your Mathematician

But, how can you support your budding mathematician when the math work feels new and complicated? There are many ways to appreciate and develop your students even when their math instruction might look different than your own:

Be a student, not a teacher. Homework is reinforcement for learning that already happened in the classroom. When your child asks for help on their homework, ask them to show you what they learned today and what they are able to do. Often, students just need to talk through their process and refer back to their previous learning to work through a challenge. By asking your student to teach you what they know rather than you teaching what they do not know, you are empowering them to synthesize their understanding and reinforcing that their classroom work is valuable and important.
Use YouTube for support. A quick search in YouTube for partial products, array multiplication, or even fraction multiplication on an array will lead you to hundreds of competent, skilled teachers delivering quick lessons on these concepts. By spending ten minutes watching an instructional video, you and your student can learn alongside each other and make it through math homework unscathed!
Sign up for an account on Splash Learn. This website is free and content is grouped by grade level standards so it is accessible and easy to navigate. In addition to games and tasks that align well to classroom strategies, the website offers plenty of parent support with definitions and examples of most math concepts and ideas, such as partial products.
Reach out to your child’s teacher. Most math curricula actually includes parent resource tools! Ask your child’s teacher if there is a parent guide, website, or workbook to help you understand what your child is learning. They should be able to point you in the right direction whether it’s partial products or any other concept or topic.

By Marisa Krohn, Learning Specialist

Engaging with Nonfiction Texts

October 3, 2023 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

Students are often drawn to nonfiction texts, eagerly exploring images of space, animals, the human body, life in ancient times, or collecting stats about their favorite sports heroes. The vibrant photos, diagrams, and charts help synthesize so much new information into digestible facts. But reading nonfiction paragraphs is a demanding task that requires readers to independently determine how all of that information fits together.

Throughout the pandemic, during remote learning, and then upon returning to regular classes, I started to notice that my students were not really engaging with nonfiction articles. They were able to answer comprehension questions and plan presentations, but they were simply copying the same facts and presenting them again without really thinking about what the texts were saying. In this way, the students were not learning the content. Working with two other colleagues, we developed a protocol for teaching how to read nonfiction texts so that our students could learn the content and develop strategies for how to be a reader of any nonfiction text.

What makes nonfiction different?

Fictional stories tend to follow a predictable pattern that we can teach our students. Most stories typically begin with an introduction to the main character’s life, then a presentation of a conflict, the tension rises, and finally the conflict is resolved. As students mature, they will experience more complex stories with more conflicts along the way to the main conflict’s resolution and they will also learn to negotiate humor, flashbacks, and other jumps in the main structure; but the general arc of the story is still there. Readers can see how the character’s actions affect the conflict, so the cause and effect stays clearly within the boundaries of the main conflict.

Since nonfiction does not follow a story arc, readers do not know how one piece of information is connected to the next. Writers give us clues, like transition words and conjunctions, to help us see when one one piece of information is an example, or a result, or a contradiction to the preceding sentence. In the way that we can teach fiction readers that we can make sense of new information as it relates to a typical story arc, we can also teach nonfiction readers that paragraphs typically begin with a topic sentence and then supporting evidence is provided to further explain or bolster the topic or claim. However, because nonfiction writing tends to have longer, more complex sentences, we need to teach our nonfiction readers how to make sense of each sentence and its connection to the main idea.

Mary J Schleppegrell writes about the language demands of different texts and the ways in which they diverge from typical spoken language in her book The Language of Schooling: A Functional Linguistics Perspective, 2004. Schleppegrell explains that writers of nonfiction texts, like articles and essays, create densely compacted sentences, using conjunctions, transition words, and clauses, in ways that are not intuitive for most students (because it’s different from how we speak). Teaching readers how language is used in nonfiction writing empowers them to read these dense sentences fluently and supports them to make connections and inferences for deeper engagement with the content. Ultimately close reading of nonfiction texts will support students as writers of nonfiction as well. And specific instruction surrounding sentence fluency and these varied structures requires studying grammar, including parts of speech and advanced punctuation use. In this way students learn how writers built nonfiction sentences, so as readers they can then deconstruct sentences in order to develop deeper content understandings.

Consider this paragraph (From Howard Zinn’s A Young People’s History of the United States, 2005):

Even as the United States involved itself in conflicts around the world in the latter half of the 1800s, it remained determined to acquire every last acre of Indigenous land within its borders. By the late 1800s, policies such as allotment had drastically reduced the remaining Indigenous land base. Still, Indigenous nations had home lands and reservations where they continued to live in their traditional ways. The existence of Indigenous people, with a prior claim to the land whose values, languages, and lifeways that differed from those of European American society, was a constant source of anxiety to white settlers.

This paragraph follows the typical pattern of introducing a claim. The claim was then followed up with supporting evidence. The writer adds language to help the reader understand how these supporting details work together. However, most of the sentences in this paragraph are complex sentences. Reading complex sentences requires the reader to determine how the clauses in one sentence are related to each other, to then draw conclusions about how the following sentences fit together.

Here are some language shifts that readers can learn how to navigate:

Transition words – These words signal how the current sentence connects to the information that came before. For example, the transition word so signals a cause/effect, but the transition word contrastingly would show that the following sentence is in opposition to the preceding sentence.
Dependent Clauses – Pay attention to the two parts of the sentence to see how one part of the sentence connects to the other.
Even as…, … . Even though… , …
When … , … . Since… , … . If…, …
Embedded information – Authors embed who, what, where, why, when, how to give us more information about a topic, but the sentence is a complete sentence without that embedded clause. So if the sentence feels confusing, we can first read it without that parenthetical clause at first.
Vocabulary – Definitions for vocabulary are often embedded, but sometimes they are referred to from previous sentences. Students should monitor their understanding of new terms.
Nominalization – Nominalization is most often used by turning a verb or adjective from the preceding sentence into a noun in the following sentence to say more about it. I used nominalization earlier when I wrote: However, most of the sentences in this paragraph are complex sentences. Reading complex sentences requires the reader to determine how the clauses in one sentence are related to each other, to then draw conclusions about how the following sentences fit together.


Even as the United States involved itself in conflicts around the world in the latter half of the 1800s, it remained determined to acquire every last acre of Indigenous land within its borders. By the late 1800s, policies such as allotment had drastically reduced the remaining Indigenous land base. Still, Indigenous nations had home lands and reservations where they continued to live in their traditional ways. The existence of Indigenous people, with a prior claim to the land whose values, languages, and lifeways that differed from those of European American society, was a constant source of anxiety to white settlers.	This shows us two actions that are happening at the same time. The use of the phrase even as makes it sound as if the two actions in this phrase are in opposition, but a closer reading reveals that the two actions are the same, just in two different locations.
	If the author says “such as __,” we have learned this word before. Do you remember it? If not, go back and find that word so you know what the author is talking about.
	The transition word still is used to show that the information in this sentence is in conflict or opposition to what was discussed in the preceding sentence.
	Turning an adjective or a verb into a noun is called nominalization. We take a verb from a previous sentence and turn it into a noun to say more about that idea. Writers often choose a new, synonymous verb to avoid repetition.
	The information in between the commas is extra information that is embedded into an idea that would make sense without it. The embedded information adds description that can be helpful for the reader, if read with appropriate pauses.

How teachers and parents can help readers navigate complex language structures

As a writer for this article, I am using many grammatical terms, like conjunctions, clauses, nouns, and verbs; but I suggest that, while using the proper names with students is important, teaching students how to use these language moves is the more essential skill. As teachers we can say things like “add more description” or “be more clear.” Students often benefit from direct instruction in how authors use language in the service of adding details or being more clear. In this way, when we support our students as readers of nonfiction, we are simultaneously helping them develop their skills as nonfiction writers. Instructing the specific vocabulary helps students to have a better way of describing the “architecture” of language and deconstructing text.

Shared Reading

In the same way teachers hone in on an author’s craft when teaching narrative writing strategies like how to incorporate inner thinking, setting details, or descriptive actions, teachers and parents can engage in close readings with their students in order to explore author’s craft in nonfiction texts as well.

Students can often struggle to fluently read complex sentences. Students often run out of breath before they get to the period and can wind up stopping at awkward places in sentences, which can affect their understanding of what they read. Readers often require direct instruction on pausing at commas in order to take a breath before completing the rest of the idea.

Students can often read so quickly that they get to the end of the paragraph without any sense of what they read. Shared reading is also an excellent time to model stopping and thinking about each sentence before moving on to the next. In addition, readers often benefit from instruction on how to read embedded clauses. It often helps for readers to see and hear what a sentence is saying without the embedded clause to get a handle on the central message of the sentence before putting the extra information back.

Once the students have grasped the meaning of the individual sentences, they can see how the sentences fit together to support a claim. Now they can start using their own transition and explaining words to identify and justify the claim and the supporting sentences in their own words.

Using Text Features to help Comprehension

Paying attention to all of those language moves can be exhausting! Fortunately, nonfiction texts are usually divided into sections with subheadings. Students can learn to use the main idea of a section (the subheadings) as a guide to check their understanding of individual paragraphs. In general, a student can say, “I know this section as about (subheading) so I just have to figure out how this paragraph is connected to the topic.”

With all of this in mind, my colleagues and I came up with a protocol to help our elementary readers prepare their minds for nonfiction reading, monitor their understanding, and then write about what they learned.

How to Read Nonfiction

BEFORE Reading – We look for the MAIN IDEA

Read the Title and Subtitles
Read the first sentence
Now you know the MAIN IDEA. It might help to write it down.

DURING Reading –

We read with our eyes, and mind, open for examples (in the book, article, chapter, or section)
Highlight or underline examples that show the main idea (in the book, article, chapter, or section)
Check our understanding of each sentence in a paragraph paying attention to connecting/explaining words, extra information, or new vocabulary.

AFTER Reading –

Write about the examples that show the main idea.

Claim: ______________________

1. ___________________
2. ___________________
3. ___________________

By Rachel Levinsky, Learning Specialist and Private Tutor, Brad Hoffman, Board Certified Educational Planner and Learning Specialist, Faya Hoffman, Board Certified Educational Planner and Learning Specialist, and Laurie Gross, M.A.T. and Reading Specialist

Summarizing Fiction Effectively

October 2, 2023 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

Many teachers and families will notice that their seemingly simple questions, “What’s your book about?” or “What’s happening in your book?” are not met with brief, comprehensible answers. Students’ long, complicated answers about their books demonstrate their difficulty with summarizing fiction and effectively sharing their understanding about what they’ve read.

Elements of Fiction

At the earliest stages, children are told that the main elements of a story are the plot, the characters, and the setting. In order for students to be successful readers and effective at summarizing fiction texts, it helps to first explore the basic structure of most fiction stories. Many teachers refer to the plot as the story mountain, which is an easy way for students to see how tension rises throughout almost all stories or fiction books.

Most stories typically begin with an introduction to the main character’s life. Then a conflict is presented. Teachers often describe the conflict as the problem in the story, but it can simply be something the character wants to happen or needs to do. Then the tension rises as the character attempts to solve the problem. Finally the conflict is resolved. As students mature, they will experience more complex stories with smaller conflicts along the way to the main conflict’s resolution.

Summarizing Fiction While Reading

Summarizing fiction while in the midst of reading is different from summarizing at the end of a book, but there are some similarities and also some common errors that students make.

It is not uncommon for students to be halfway through a book without being able to name the main character or what the character wants. Or, there are students who know the central problem, but they struggle to see how the chapters connect to the main idea. So it is helpful for readers to summarize throughout a book because it helps them keep track of what is happening. These short summaries are helpful for teachers and families to check that the reader has a sense of what is happening and why. As students read more complex chapter books, they should always have an understanding of how each chapter fits into the general arc of the story; in other words, how the parts fit into the whole.

During reading assessments, students are often asked to tell about the most important events of a story. I have noticed that many students are unsure of what is important and what isn’t important when they are reading, and that’s why we often get long explanations or seemingly disparate pieces of information that are confusing. For some students, the most important information is the conversation two characters had. For other students, the important information is the funny moment that made them laugh. Therefore, I ask students to name the main idea of the chapter instead of the important information.

When learning how to name a main idea, students benefit from direct instruction about the difference between a main idea of a chapter, which is a more general statement that encompasses several actions that happened, versus small, specific details. When chapters have titles, the title is often a clue about the main idea. It helps for all learners to see that a main idea is something that gets repeated or is discussed for a large part of a chapter, whereas specific details are mentioned once (but can certainly support the main idea). The skill of distinguishing an overarching big idea from specific details is an essential skill that readers will be able to apply to nonfiction reading as well.

Summarizing fiction after a reader has finished is a different task. Once the problem has been resolved, the reader can identify what information was important because they can see which actions directly led to the problem being solved. While a summary written in the midst of reading seeks to explain how the current events fit with the main problem, a summary at the end of the book maps out the steps that led to the resolution.


When summarizing throughout a book	When summarizing at the end of a book
Name the title of the book and the author.	Name the title of the book and the author.
Name the main character.	Name the main character.
Name the setting (time and place) if it is essential to understanding what the book is about.	Name the setting (time and place) if it is essential to understanding what the book is about.
Name the main problem.	Name the main problem.
Name the main idea of the chapter and how it connects to the main problem of the book.	Name the steps the character took to resolve the problem

Before writing, many students benefit from direct instruction on how to embed so much information into one sentence. The Somebody-Wanted-But-So strategy is an effective starting framework for summarizing fiction texts. A typical summary sentence starter might look like this:

In title of book, by author, character wanted . . . but . . .

Title of book, by author, is about character who wanted . . . but . . .

Summaries need to pack a lot of information into a few sentences. Many students will need practice with the grammar and punctuation associated with more complex sentence structures.

Leveling up students’ summaries

In order for students to demonstrate a high level of independent comprehension, they should be able to infer and express their own ideas about the text. A highly effective summary includes students’ ideas about the characters, events, or author’s craft showcasing their inferential thinking skills.

When we hear students gasp, laugh, or talk to their characters, we know they are deeply engaging with their books beyond basic comprehension. As readers, we infer when we collect clues authors have mentioned but haven’t directly stated. Students can demonstrate a stronger level of comprehension by summarizing fiction in a way that uses evidence from the text to defend their own ideas about the text.

Here are some typical inferences (though there are many more) students will wrestle with. These examples are listed in a general order of rising complexity:

Predict what they think will happen next.
Think about a character’s feelings or personality.
Develop theories about character relationships.
Interpret the meaning of new words or expressions.
Learn life lessons from the book.
Identify overarching themes.
Name symbols that are repeated.
Wonder about an author’s style or writing choices.

When we challenge students to share their own thoughts about a chapter or book, it is essential that students provide evidence from the text to support their ideas. In our experience, whenever we’ve simply asked students what they thought about their reading, they often share their predictions. Children can develop very creative ideas for their predictions, so requiring evidence to support their theories helps keep their predictions grounded and provides a clear check on their independent comprehension.

We have found that our students almost always need direct instruction and guided practice for how to manage any of the previously identified inferring skills. The more students have the opportunity to practice these skills during guided practice, the more confident they will become to take risks and reveal their thoughts about their reading. Below you will find some suggestions to help develop your student’s skill set in summarizing fiction.

Types of Inferences


Types of Inferences	Supporting Practices
Predict what they think will happen next	Readers can observe character actions or thoughts to notice what a character might be planning to do.
Think about a character’s feelings or personality	Characters may be feeling one way in a moment but those feelings might change throughout the book. Generally a character’s personality trait stays the same and can be proven with several examples from a book or across a series. Students benefit from direct instruction on personality trait words so they can use the vocabulary correctly and independently. Games like charades are a fun way to practice personality trait vocabulary.
Develop theories about character relationships	Readers can notice how a character talks to or reacts to others to gather clues about what kind of relationship a character has with others.
Interpret the meaning of new words or expressions	Figuring out the meaning of unfamiliar words is like finding the missing piece to a puzzle. First we can decode the word to hear how it might be related to other words. For example, if the new word is expansive, we can think about how it might be connected to the word expand. Next we think about what the sentences around the new word are talking about. Once we know the context, we can think about words that would work in the same situation to give us some clues about what the new word might mean.
Learn life lessons from the book	We can first notice the lesson a character learns, but we may have to change the words to make it a more general statement so that the lesson is applicable beyond the book. For example, a student might say that Zoey, in Zoey and Sassafras, learned how to take care of a baby dragon by testing out different kinds of foods. Then the student can expand the idea to say we can all learn how to use scientific experimentation strategies to answer a question.
Identify overarching themes	Students often connect the life lessons to possible themes since they can apply to all of us. Many students benefit from lists of common themes, but they should be able to justify how that theme is demonstrated in the book.
Name symbols that are repeated	Readers can observe which words or ideas are repeated throughout the book. Possessions that are important to characters, or items that keep coming back, often serve as a symbol to represent a character’s hope, experience, or lesson.
Wonder about an author’s style or writing choices	Authors often have a way of writing that sets them apart from others. Some authors use a lot of similes to help us imagine. Other authors write with very short sentences. Some authors write long detailed descriptions of the setting. These authors make these stylistic choices to help us as readers. Readers can reflect on how the author’s style impacted them as they read the book.

In order for students to develop several defensible ideas about their reading, it helps to read several books in the same series. Reading across a series enables a reader to pay more attention to new events and vocabulary since they already know all of the characters. When your students have developed theories about their characters and books, they can include those ideas to demonstrate they understood and engaged with their books.

Summarizing fiction is an incredibly complex task. Readers must determine what information is most important or central to the main idea of the text, reconstructing how events fit into the overall plot. When writing a summary, they must pack a lot of information (who, what, why) into a few sentences. Finally, readers can be challenged to share their own thoughts about the events of a book. Distilling all these ideas into a few, clear sentences takes a lot of practice. The next time you ask a young reader what their book is all about, consider the attentional, executive function, and language skills that were involved in forming the response! Writing effective and succinct summaries takes years of elementary school practice with lots of opportunities for direct instruction and timely feedback!

A Different Tutoring Experience With My Learning Springboard

August 24, 2023 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

What makes for effective tutoring? What’s the difference between tutoring and academic coaching? How is a learning specialist different from an educational therapist? What is the role of a Board Certified Educational Planner? Why work with an organization instead of an individual?

When Faya and I launched My Learning Springboard in 2009, we set out to create a distinctly different tutoring experience for families in New York City and beyond. As a nimble, proactive multidisciplinary team, we engage in educational planning and educational problem solving, which may include:

Private tutoring with a focus on academic intervention
Private tutoring with a focus on academic acceleration
Executive function coaching
Test preparation
Special education advocacy
Ongoing school planning, including course selection, preparation for parent-teacher conferences, navigating current trends, or crisis management (e.g. disciplinary action)
Admissions consulting (preK-12) — day schools and boarding schools (mainstream, specialized, and therapeutic schools)
College Counseling

Faya and I are both Board Certified Educational Planners (AICEP) and Professional Members of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) with triple designations for school planning and admissions consulting across mainstream, specialized, or therapeutic settings, including day and boarding schools. We are also college counselors and Professional Members of NACAC. We grow with our families over time, and we frequently support siblings with very different needs, often attending different schools.

We believe that the most effective educators are collaborative, reflective, compassionate, patient, and open to constructive feedback. They are committed to collegiality, lifelong learning, and professional development at every stage of their careers. They love to creatively problem solve, to brainstorm instructional strategies, and to learn new programs and approaches. They read voraciously within their field and beyond. They are lifelong learners who seek additional degrees, certifications, and professional development to enhance the tutoring experience. They care deeply about their students’ success and will approach the academic work in any number of ways in order to make it transparent, meaningful, and accessible.

“Tutoring” doesn’t fully capture what we do, and the job title “tutor” isn’t a particularly descriptive word. Our faculty is comprised of early childhood educators, elementary educators, middle and high school educators, special educators, reading specialists, math specialists, college professors, and subject-matter experts. Our learning specialists are professional educators with degrees in special education, or experienced general educators with expertise in developing and delivering targeted interventions; these teachers have often worked in fully inclusive settings and/or collaborative team teaching classrooms. Learning specialists could have very different professional backgrounds, so the matching in each student case is really important. For example, learning specialists with expertise in dyslexia intervention are often different from learning specialists with expertise in autism, ADHD, or executive function coaching. Reading specialists and math specialists are specific types of learning specialists with degrees or certifications in reading or math instruction. These educators typically have different professional backgrounds and training from English, literature, and math subject matter experts or college professors.

As an executive team of educational therapists and learning specialists, our interest goes beyond the subject matter itself. We’re concerned with a student’s self-awareness and underlying learning skills as well as his/her social and emotional well being. After every session with every student, our teachers collaborate with our senior leadership team — Brad Hoffman, Faya Hoffman, and Laurie Gross — so that we can brainstorm and discuss strategies and approaches in real time. Therefore, each of our families benefits from a curriculum and development team with pedagogical expertise, special education expertise, subject matter expertise, and school planning and placement expertise.

No matter what comes up on the schooling front, our families are never alone in navigating educational decision-making. Our wide ranging expertise allows us to go down any necessary path. This teamwork leads to an entirely different tutoring experience — and educational planning experience — for our families.

By Brad Hoffman, M.S.Ed. and Board Certified Educational Planner, and Faya Hoffman, M.A. and Board Certified Educational Planner

Tutoring As A Springboard To Achievement

August 21, 2023 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.
~Clay P. Bedford

Learning is a lifelong journey, and it should be an exciting one! Can you remember your favorite teacher? Tour guide? Facilitator? What made that experience so memorable? For me, it always comes down to relationships and connections. Passionate, engaging teachers tend to have passionate, engaged students. A master teacher does really make a difference.

With the help of a great teacher, mentor or coach, we can push ourselves that much farther and realize our full potential. It isn’t about competition with others; it’s about self-empowerment, self-motivation, curiosity, and a desire to achieve for one’s own gratification. A master teacher is invaluable at all stages of life.

Tutoring comes in all shapes and sizes. Beyond school admissions and test preparation, we generally work with families for one of three reasons:

A student is struggling in a particular subject area and needs help to fill a learning gap or reinforce material. This work may include working with a Learning Specialist, Reading Specialist, or Math Specialist.
A student is seeking additional challenge or wants to pursue a specific curiosity with an enrichment teacher or academic coach.
A student needs help to optimize their approach with organizational and study skills, thus executive function coaching is needed.

Ultimately, the goal is to help students develop effective studying strategies that will lead to self-empowerment, improved confidence, and greater independence. Whether the focus is support or enrichment, tutoring may be short-term to jump start the process or long-term to provide more ongoing instruction.

In the case of short-term tutoring, students often need a teacher, mentor or coach to help them springboard into success. A common question is “How long does it take to create a habit?” There are varying opinions ranging from 21-66 days. But the bottom line is that consistency and practice are needed for any habit or behavior change to stick. This idea applies to tutoring as well. If a student needs support to develop organizational systems, study habits, or new behaviors, then tutoring may be a short-term engagement to help get on the right path and take off.

Tutoring may also be short-term if the learning goal is narrow. For example, a student may want to spend several sessions with a language tutor getting ready for an upcoming vacation, business trip or study abroad experience. Or a student may want to meet with a museum educator or historian to help bring a historical unit to life. Other students have sought out short-term support to prepare for a specific exam or to expedite progress in a particular area.

Longer term tutoring may begin as specific academic support but then evolve into broader academic coaching. Once the relationship is developed, our students often request that the tutor stay on as a resource for continued support, enrichment, motivation and structured practice. We’re so impressed with how much ownership our students assume. We have students as young as fifth and sixth graders that directly manage scheduling, send text messages when they have questions and prepare the agenda and work priorities for the upcoming session.

As a teacher, you can choose to be the “Guide on the Side” or the “Sage on Stage.” Both have their time and place, but more often than not we look to be the “Guide on the Side” because that means our students are equal partners in the process. As a classroom teacher, my colleagues and I used to say that an “A” has 3 points: 1) the student’s accountability, 2) the teacher’s accountability, and 3) the parent’s accountability. Another way of saying this is “my job, your job, our job.” When all 3 points are working together, a student’s achievement is unstoppable!

By Brad Hoffman, M.S.Ed.
Board Certified Educational Planner and Learning Specialist
My Learning Springboard, Inc.