Cross age tutoring: alternatives to the reading resource room for struggling adolescent readers

Journal of Instructional Psychology, Dec, 2001 by Douglas Fisher

In addition to fluency changes, I noticed that the tutors increasingly demonstrated their understanding of rhythm, rhyme, stress and intonation as they modeled the skills for their tutees. During an early observation of Shallen tutoring, the observation notes indicate that she "makes many mistakes during her read aloud of Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak, 1963), including mispronunciations of the words blinking, frightened, terrible, and gnashed. She also has several mis-starts and speaks in a monotone voice as she reads to her tutees." Four months later, observation notes of Shallen indicated that she read the book Madeline (Bemelmans, 1939) with "great expression and intonation. She seems excited to share the book with her tutees and uses her voice to pause and create little tensions while reading." The notes further indicate that Shallan only mispronounced one word -- disaster.

Approximately four weeks into class, the middle school teacher created a lesson on the book There's an Ant in Anthony (Most, 1980) for second graders. The tutors were to read the book and then talk with their tutees about all the places that they could find the word "ant" in other words. Justin had a very difficult time reading this book. "Justin seems to word call every word on the page. He doesn't seem to know what he is reading and seems surprised each time that he comes to a word with `ant' in it. He is fairly boring to listen to but the students in his group continue to pay attention looking for new instances of the word `ant.' No word in the book gets more stress than any other word in the book." In May, Justin was observed reading The Day of Ahmed's Secret (Lewin, 1990). Justin read the book with "great intonation and feeling. He has gained his groups' interest in this book and is playing it for all it is worth. He pauses regularly during his reading, but he clearly knows the words. It seems that he is using his voice and pauses to generate intrigue with the story."

A third area in which the seventh grade struggling readers made progress was in writing. Early journal entries confirm the fact that this group of students performs in the lowest quartile. For example, Marty's first journal entry reads (with corrections for spelling) "I read to the kids yesterday." Approximately two months later, one of Marty's entries read, "When I read Vowels and Consonants [The War Between the Vowels and the Consonants, Turner, 1996], I asked the kids to name all the vowels. They got them all right. I also asked them to tell me words that started with vowels, they know a lot of them. I think they are learning to listen better now." Approximately three weeks before the end of the school year, Marry wrote, "We read How the Second Grade got $8,205.50 to Visit the Statue of Liberty [Zimelman, 1992] and talked about expenses and profit. They really got the point about sales having to make money. It's like our school fundraiser. I was at the meeting and asked if we were sure we were going to make any money. We can't go on the summer tour if we don't make the money. The second graders got it, maybe I should read the book to the kids at my school."