Direct Tutoring News:

Alexandra (Sacha) Luria-Smith of Direct Tutoring teaches children to read with great success: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 - When teacher Alexandra Luria discovered that her Oakland sixth-graders were reading like first-graders, she knew something had to be done. Two of them didn't know the alphabet. A student reading the sentence, ``I sent her a clock last week," didn't recognize the words ``her," ``clock" or ``last."

Luria looked at some research and picked the direct instruction method, which treats all the students as if they need to start from square one. The method doesn't assume kids will naturally pick up any reading skills or even know what sound a letter makes.

By the end of the school year most of her James Madison Middle School students were reading like fifth-graders. They were whizzing through text at 120 words a minute and deciphering terms such as ``exaggerate" and ``bothersome." The students also had some of the highest scores in math in East Oakland on the Oakland Unified tests - probably because they could finally read the word problems. Read More

New Oregon Created Reading Program boosts Test Scores: A newly published independent study demonstrates that Funnix/Horizons, a computer-based reading program, has a significant long-term impact on children’s reading success. The program, developed in Oregon, can be used by both parents and teachers, at home or in the classroom.

The study, published in the Journal of Direct Instruction (Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 2004) and conducted by Kevin Tobin of Pittsfield Public Schools in Massachusetts, found that students who participated in the reading program for one year in first grade immediately out-performed their peers and continued to hold their gains. Results from the study indicate that “students who received the Horizons (Funnix) curriculum maintained and even increased their superior performance two and three years later, on state-mandated tests.” Read More