Tom, a Building Better Readers volunteer, helps tutor a student.
Tom has been a Building Better Readers tutor since the program began four years ago. This year he tutored three first grade students at Hammock Pointe Elementary in Boca Raton. Portuguese is spoken exclusively in Millena’s home. Understandably, she struggled at the beginning of the year to decode written English words as well as to grasp the nuances of the English language. Tom had her reread passages numerous times to gain fluency and meaning. Through Tom’s patience and encouragement, Millena’s vocabulary expansion over the course of the year was amazing and she began to actually enjoy discussing the stories they read together. By the end of the year Millena had advanced four reading levels.
Building Better Readers had 137 volunteers tutoring 309 first and second grade children in 22 elementary schools in Palm Beach County and after school during the 2017-2018 school year. Each student in the Building Better Readers program receives 30 minutes of one-to-one tutoring twice a week in the classroom or 60 minutes of one-to-one tutoring once a week after school in reading comprehension with the same tutor throughout the school year. Each student also receives five new books to take home. This is often the first time these children have ever had their very own book.
