Object boxes for tutoring in a literacy lab at a year round elementary school

Abstract

A tutoring program at a year-round public school coordinated by a certified teacher and staffed with preservice teacher tutors enrolled in a college class followed best practices and featured unique tutoring materials called object boxes (sets of objects and corresponding word or letter cards housed in boxes and used to teach language concepts). An evaluation study of the tutoring program compared pretest and posttest normal curve equivalent (NCE) scores on the TERA-2 of 86 first and second grade students who initially attained an NCE of 59.8 or lower. Those who attended 45 hours of the Literacy Lab tutoring program on their off-track time scored significantly higher (p = .002) on the posttest (mean NCE gain score = 18.1) than a control group (mean NCE gain score = 6.2) who practiced reading at home. The effect size (0.78) was large, indicating the efficacy of the program. Four different object boxes from the program are pictured and described: a word family that shows alliteration and assonance; a hink-pink riddle box; a box of objects representing words with two meanings; and an African scene with sentence cards.