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WRITING TUTORING

Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
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Our Writing Tutors Travel To Your NYC Metro Area Home! Expert In-Person 1:1 Writing Tutoring | Free Consultations and Meet & Greets with Our Staff.

Our Writing Tutors Travel To Your NYC Metro Area Home! Expert In-Person 1:1 Writing Tutoring | Free Consultations and Meet & Greets with Our Staff.
FOR LITERACY SERVICES OUTSIDE OF BROOKLYN
We travel to:
BROOKLYN NEIGHBORHOODS
Bay Ridge Bedford Stuyvesant Bensonhurst Boerum Hill Borough Park Brooklyn Heights Bushwick Carroll Gardens Clinton Hill Cobble Hill Crown Heights Downtown Brooklyn Dumbo Dyker Heights Flatbush Fort Green Gowanus Gravesend Greenpoint Homecrest Kensington Lefferts Gardens Madison Manhattan Beach Midwood Mill Basin Navy Yard Park Slope Prospect Heights Prospect Park South Red Hook Sheepshead Bay Sunset Park Williamsburg Windsor Terrace and More!
Common Core English Language Arts (ELA) Standards & Worksheets
Training/Certifications
Common Core English Language Arts (ELA) Standards & Worksheets
Training/Certifications
TESTIMONIALS

"She’s absolutely wonderful and we are grateful to have found her!"
Miss. Shelley has changed our son’s life in a way we never thought possible. She is patient and kind, but most of all, effective. Our seven-year-old has been working with Miss. Shelley for almost a year. During that time, our son has gone from below average to exceeding expectations. He’s more confident and fluid in his reading and writing and continues to make excellent progress. Most importantly, Miss. Shelley deals extremely well with our son’s periodic lack of focus. She manages to bring him “back” to the table with her techniques and patience. I would urge any parent whose child struggles with reading to jump on the opportunity to work with her. Miss. Shelley appears to use just the right mix of tools in her lessons. Repeating the basics, introducing new concepts, some games to keep things interesting, and finally, some reading and writing. We are truly grateful for Miss. Shelley and continue to look forward to working with her in the future.

- Vassiliki

"We were happy with Michelle’s services."
Alara had a good year overall – her organizational skills improved and she showed nice progress in reading and writing. Michelle and her teachers were a key part in helping to make this happen, so much appreciated. Michelle worked very well with Alara and we appreciate it!

- Mark S.

"Samantha is a true gem!".
Samantha was the perfect match for our 9 yr. old son. After evaluation, Samantha prepared a plan with goals and within one month of services, Gregory was already showing improvements in his executive function abilities and writing. Samantha's positive energy and poise make a world of difference. Consequently, Gregory worked on his school assignments with pride and attention. The improvement was visible and we are thrilled with the results.

-with much gratitude, Deborah (Greg's mom).

Allison has been absolutely wonderful. Juliet’s writing has improved by leaps and bounds, as has her confidence. Allison is patient and kind. Here’s a text I sent her last night: “I just wanted to say that I’ve never seen Juliet happier coming back from any tutoring, lesson, or therapy as she is when comes back from seeing you.” We feel very lucky to have found her. Thank you for all of your help sending her to us!

- David

Daria has been wonderful! Our daughter really enjoys working with her and has been making good progress.

- Brienna, mom of a 7 year old

Clint has been a good fit for our son! He’s made a lot of thoughtful suggestions that have helped him improve, such as having him do short free writing sessions each day to increase his stamina for writing.

Out of the blue yesterday he told us that he likes school! So that’s a marked change from where we were at in the fall!

- Roger

Writing or written expression is one of the fundamental skills of literacy and communication. But for some children, developing writing skills needs special attention. This is particularly true for children with learning disabilities. A student with a learning difficulty will typically struggle with literacy, particularly with writing skills.

For students struggling at the word level with encoding (spelling), we highly recommend an Orton Gillingham approach with an emphasis on spelling tutoring. For students writing at the sentence level, there are various strategies and techniques to help students at the written level. For students struggling at the oral level of literacy, we have speech language therapists/pathologists who help students with their oral and written forms of literacy. Some students need help with vocabulary acquisition. For students with executive functioning (EF) difficulties, e.g. planning, organizing ideas etc., we help these students with EF at the appropriate modality/modalities, e.g. written, oral, both. 

Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Writing Intervention Strategies

Writing is a multidimensional skill that requires mastery of different processes. A child must learn spelling, handwriting, and also planning, organizing, and revising ideas. Children with learning disabilities often have problems with phonemic processing (representing and manipulating sounds), alphabetic principles (recognizing sounds represented by letters), and letter-sound connections. This leads to difficulties in the transcription aspect of writing, and consequently, to their inability to communicate thoughts and ideas.

Effective writing intervention must address all aspects of the writing process using a particular strategy. Self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) is an instructional approach that adds self-regulation elements when teaching writing beyond the word level. It is designed to help students learn, use, and adopt techniques and strategies used by skilled writers. Through SRSD, students track, evaluate, and revise their writing to encourage independent learning and self-monitoring.

Guidance and scaffolded instruction are crucial to SRSD as teachers or tutors must explicitly show students how to create meaning when writing. There are six stages of instructional sequence that writing instructors can follow to help learners become more independent and adept at using SRSD. These stages are flexible, and the order is often rearranged, combined, modified, or repeated depending on the needs of the student and teacher (Graham & Harris, 2005).

  • Develop background knowledge – The instructor explains and teaches skills a learner will need to understand, learn, and apply a particular strategy.
  • Discuss it – The instructor evaluates the learner’s current writing performance before introducing a new strategy. He or she will then explain and discuss how it can help the learner accomplish writing tasks and become a more proficient writer. 
  • Model it – Through self-talk, think-aloud, and self-instruction, the instructor models the strategy to the learner. They will then discuss how to tailor it to meet the student’s needs.
  • Memorize it – The learner memorizes the steps using mnemonics (if applicable) and self-statements.
  • Support it – The student practices the strategy as often and in as many ways as possible. At the same time, the instructor supports, gives feedback, prompts, and encourages the learner. The levels of support and scaffolding decrease gradually over time to strengthen the learner’s independence and self-regulation skills.
  • Independent performance – The learner practices and adapts the writing strategy independently.
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Techniques for Writing Instruction

At Brooklyn Letters, our writing tutors focus on specialized and individualized intervention to improve the student’s written skills. The scope of our instruction addresses the six traits of writing, which are key ingredients in proficient writing. The six traits framework also allows teachers and tutors to assess a learner’s skills, identify strengths, and target weaknesses. These traits are:

  • Ideas / Content: This refers to the main idea of a piece of writing. Learners choose a single topic and elaborate on it, using relevant information or supporting ideas to make the message clearer.
  • Organization: This refers to the planning, drafting, and revising of thoughts and ideas. Students learn to reveal and write ideas logically (with a beginning, middle, and end).
  • Word Choice: This refers to the effectiveness of each word that a student uses in a piece of writing. A strong vocabulary is important so the learner can use rich and colorful language as well as use the right words to convey a specific meaning.
  • Sentence Fluency: Readability is key in effective writing, which means sentences must flow smoothly, are easy to read, and have complete thoughts and variety.
  • Grammar or Conventions: This trait refers to the learner’s ability to follow spelling rules, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar (such as conjugating verbs and knowing when to use those cute little adverbs).
  • Voice: Learners need to be able to express themselves through writing. This is key in creating their own unique styles that showcase their individuality.

We teach strategies to facilitate writing development and address crucial writing skills, including:

  • Vocabulary (nouns, action words, descriptors)
  • Grammar (sentence construction, verb tense, and fragments, among others)
  • Types of sentences (statements, questions)
  • Increasing linguistic complexity (compound to complex sentences)
  • Types of paragraphs (reason, persuasion, comparison, and contrasting)
  • Improving organization/cohesion of ideas (map out setting, identifying problems, goals, episodes, connecting ideas, visual and verbal organizers, and more).

These skills are targeted independently for remediation, and they are also implemented in the student’s curriculum.

We take into consideration the student’s interests, strengths, challenges, and learning style when developing activities to enhance written language skills. These activities may include pictures (including drawing), books (including picture books), personal experiences, art and music, journals, book reports, and editing (including correcting the tutor’s mistakes), to name a few.

(Related: Learn about Brooklyn Letters’ Online Literacy Assessment Evaluation).

MEET OUR BROOKLYN LITERACY SPECIALISTS WHO TRAVEL TO YOUR HOME
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Jill M.
M.S., Literacy Specialist
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Dan B.
M.S. ED., NYS
Certified Childhood
General And Special Education (Grades 1-6)
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Tamara C.
NY Early Childhood and
Students with Disabilities (B-2)
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Brian
MAT in Early Childhood Education,
Certificate in Childhood Education (Grades 1-6)
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Anastasiya K.
MA, NYS Certified
(Birth-Grade 2)
General And Special Education
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Clint K.
Master’s in General
and Special Education
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Tatiana S.
M.S. Elementary Education,
Certificate in Childhood
(Grades 1-6)
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Janeese C.
Bachelor of Science
in Elementary Education
and Master’s Degree in
Special Education

Writing or written expression is one of the fundamental skills of literacy and communication. But for some children, developing writing skills needs special attention. This is particularly true for children with learning disabilities. A student with a learning difficulty will typically struggle with literacy, particularly with writing skills.

For students struggling at the word level with encoding (spelling), we highly recommend an Orton Gillingham approach with an emphasis on spelling tutoring. For students writing at the sentence level, there are various strategies and techniques to help students at the written level. For students struggling at the oral level of literacy, we have speech language therapists/pathologists who help students with their oral and written forms of literacy. Some students need help with vocabulary acquisition. For students with executive functioning (EF) difficulties, e.g. planning, organizing ideas etc., we help these students with EF at the appropriate modality/modalities, e.g. written, oral, both. 

Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Writing Intervention Strategies

 

Writing is a multidimensional skill that requires mastery of different processes. A child must learn spelling, handwriting, and also planning, organizing, and revising ideas. Children with learning disabilities often have problems with phonemic processing (representing and manipulating sounds), alphabetic principles (recognizing sounds represented by letters), and letter-sound connections. This leads to difficulties in the transcription aspect of writing, and consequently, to their inability to communicate thoughts and ideas.

Effective writing intervention must address all aspects of the writing process using a particular strategy. Self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) is an instructional approach that adds self-regulation elements when teaching writing beyond the word level. It is designed to help students learn, use, and adopt techniques and strategies used by skilled writers. Through SRSD, students track, evaluate, and revise their writing to encourage independent learning and self-monitoring.

Guidance and scaffolded instruction are crucial to SRSD as teachers or tutors must explicitly show students how to create meaning when writing. There are six stages of instructional sequence that writing instructors can follow to help learners become more independent and adept at using SRSD. These stages are flexible, and the order is often rearranged, combined, modified, or repeated depending on the needs of the student and teacher (Graham & Harris, 2005).

  • Develop background knowledge – The instructor explains and teaches skills a learner will need to understand, learn, and apply a particular strategy.
  • Discuss it – The instructor evaluates the learner’s current writing performance before introducing a new strategy. He or she will then explain and discuss how it can help the learner accomplish writing tasks and become a more proficient writer. 
  • Model it – Through self-talk, think-aloud, and self-instruction, the instructor models the strategy to the learner. They will then discuss how to tailor it to meet the student’s needs.
  • Memorize it – The learner memorizes the steps using mnemonics (if applicable) and self-statements.
  • Support it – The student practices the strategy as often and in as many ways as possible. At the same time, the instructor supports, gives feedback, prompts, and encourages the learner. The levels of support and scaffolding decrease gradually over time to strengthen the learner’s independence and self-regulation skills.
  • Independent performance – The learner practices and adapts the writing strategy independently.
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Techniques for Writing Instruction

 

At Brooklyn Letters, our writing tutors focus on specialized and individualized intervention to improve the student’s written skills. The scope of our instruction addresses the six traits of writing, which are key ingredients in proficient writing. The six traits framework also allows teachers and tutors to assess a learner’s skills, identify strengths, and target weaknesses. These traits are:

  • Ideas / Content: This refers to the main idea of a piece of writing. Learners choose a single topic and elaborate on it, using relevant information or supporting ideas to make the message clearer. 
  • Organization: This refers to the planning, drafting, and revising of thoughts and ideas. Students learn to reveal and write ideas logically (with a beginning, middle, and end).
  • Word Choice: This refers to the effectiveness of each word that a student uses in a piece of writing. A strong vocabulary is important so the learner can use rich and colorful language as well as use the right words to convey a specific meaning. 
  • Sentence Fluency: Readability is key in effective writing, which means sentences must flow smoothly, are easy to read, and have complete thoughts and variety.
  • Grammar or Conventions: This trait refers to the learner’s ability to follow spelling rules, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar (such as conjugating verbs and knowing when to use those cute little adverbs).
  • Voice: Learners need to be able to express themselves through writing. This is key in creating their own unique styles that showcase their individuality.

We teach strategies to facilitate writing development and address crucial writing skills, including:

  • Vocabulary (nouns, action words, descriptors) 
  • Grammar (sentence construction, verb tense, and fragments, among others)
  • Types of sentences (statements, questions)
  • Increasing linguistic complexity (compound to complex sentences)
  • Types of paragraphs (reason, persuasion, comparison, and contrasting)
  • Improving organization/cohesion of ideas (map out setting, identifying problems, goals, episodes, connecting ideas, visual and verbal organizers, and more). 

These skills are targeted independently for remediation, and they are also implemented in the student’s curriculum.

We take into consideration the student’s interests, strengths, challenges, and learning style when developing activities to enhance written language skills. These activities may include pictures (including drawing), books (including picture books), personal experiences, art and music, journals, book reports, and editing (including correcting the tutor’s mistakes), to name a few.

(Related: Learn about Brooklyn Letters’ Online Literacy Assessment Evaluation).

MEET OUR BROOKLYN LITERACY SPECIALISTS WHO TRAVEL TO YOUR HOME
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Jill M.
M.S., Literacy Specialist
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Dan B.
M.S. ED., NYS
Certified Childhood
General And Special Education (Grades 1-6)
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Tamara C.
NY Early Childhood and
Students with Disabilities (B-2)
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Brian
MAT in Early Childhood Education,
Certificate in Childhood Education (Grades 1-6)
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Anastasiya K.
MA, NYS Certified
(Birth-Grade 2)
General And Special Education
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Clint K.
Master’s in General
and Special Education
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Tatiana S.
M.S. Elementary Education,
Certificate in Childhood
(Grades 1-6)
Writing Tutoring, Brooklyn Letters
Janeese C.
Bachelor of Science
in Elementary Education
and Master’s Degree in
Special Education

FREE CONSULTATION!!!
Call: (347) 394-3485,
Text: (917) 426-8880

Email: [email protected]
(we respond to email right away!) 

FREE CONSULTATION!!!
Call: (347) 394-3485,
Text: (917) 426-8880

Email: [email protected]
(we respond to email right away!)