If you have a student in elementary grades (1-6) who could benefit from summer tutoring in reading, sign up at Kump Education Center (across from Kroger in Elkins) Monday, June 15, between 3 and 6 p.m.

Each student will plan to work with a tutor for an hour one day a week over a four-week period between June 16 and July 15. Tutoring sessions will be available Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday between 3 and 6 p.m., or on Saturday between 10 a.m. and noon. There is a fee for tutoring and scheduling adjustments may be made for family vacation times.

Both parents and teachers are faced with the dilemma of deciding how to prepare the next generation to live in a world that is significantly different from the one we lived in 25 years ago. Nobody knows how the workplace will change, and we cannot predict what new skills young people will need to be happy and successful in 2050. We live in a time of transition when artificial intelligence challenges human intelligence.

Nevertheless, reading is still fundamental. The word fundamental includes both the words FUN and MENTAL. These are the two types of experiences that are necessary for children to learn to read. They must have fun with reading if they are expected to practice reading enough to gain skill and speed. Also, they must have confidence that their own minds are good enough to decode symbols and make sense of words on a page or on a screen.

We will help students to develop phonics skills they may have missed when school was out for COVID-19 or snow days over the last few years. These interruptions may have prevented them from developing skills during their critical learning phases of natural development. Individual attention allows tutors time to observe what each student can do with word recognition, sentence structure, and vocabulary as well as comprehension. Best of all, with buddy reading each student can read out loud to a tutor without suffering embarrassment with their peers, and they can share reading with an adult who reads read with expression.

Our tutoring plan helps students have fun with the reading process. We use “buddy reading” with an adult to find the student’s current reading level and then expand their skills to the next level. During the reading process tutors converse with students to help them develop mental strategies to comprehend the meaning. Students will write down their answers with the tutor’s help. After tutors get to know their students, they will suggest books that students may enjoy at their new reading and interest levels.

The dark side of the story about not learning to read is what often happens to adults who are illiterate in our computer-loving society. Although computers use push button icons and other symbols besides letters, computer operation requires basic reading skills. Now almost all manual jobs require reading directions on paper or on a screen. New cars are repaired with computer monitoring devices, and even digging a large ditch quickly involves being able to read directions for a backhoe. We must help students in Randolph County read effectively if they are going to earn a living.