Platinum Award Winner
Tutor Tots received the Platinum Readers' Choice Award, under the category of Learning Centres, in July 2020. A huge thank you to everyone who has supported, and continues to support, our small, family-owned business.
Thank you to our amazing students who fill our hearts everyday, and thank you to our fabulous tutors for all their hard work and their dedication to making a difference in the educational journeys of all their students.
Our Tutoring Approach
The tutoring approach at Tutor Tots is about developing the skills required to truly understand.
Unlike many other tutoring services that practice remediation tutoring where the tutor goes back to the student's level and re-teaches all the basics, we use reinforcement tutoring or supportive tutoring. We target what the student is doing in school right now using strategic remediation or going back and picking up the specific pieces requiring attention. This helps your child get more immediate results. Due to the fact we use reinforcement tutoring, this type of tutoring cannot be standardized because every lesson is different. Therefore, we do not hand out pre-packaged workbooks. We focus on targeting what the student needs the most at the time of tutoring. We believe in teaching children strategies for long term success.
We believe that all children deserve to feel the pride that comes with knowing they have done their absolute best, so that's why at Tutor Tots the focus is not only on enhancing skills and boosting grades but also on building confidence. Confidence builds unshakeable self-belief and that self-belief is what drives motivation--the desire to succeed, the energy to keep going, the push to move forward, the willingness to take risks, the ability to fail without feeling defeated or paralyzed, and the pull towards realizing dreams and accomplishing goals.
At Tutor Tots, we teach your children the fundamentals they need to truly succeed.
Whether your child is struggling, has a desire to learn more or needs more of an academic challenge, our small, family-owned business provides a safe, nurturing environment where your child can shine.
Unlike many other tutoring services that practice remediation tutoring where the tutor goes back to the student's level and re-teaches all the basics, we use reinforcement tutoring or supportive tutoring. We target what the student is doing in school right now using strategic remediation or going back and picking up the specific pieces requiring attention. This helps your child get more immediate results. Due to the fact we use reinforcement tutoring, this type of tutoring cannot be standardized because every lesson is different. Therefore, we do not hand out pre-packaged workbooks. We focus on targeting what the student needs the most at the time of tutoring. We believe in teaching children strategies for long term success.
We believe that all children deserve to feel the pride that comes with knowing they have done their absolute best, so that's why at Tutor Tots the focus is not only on enhancing skills and boosting grades but also on building confidence. Confidence builds unshakeable self-belief and that self-belief is what drives motivation--the desire to succeed, the energy to keep going, the push to move forward, the willingness to take risks, the ability to fail without feeling defeated or paralyzed, and the pull towards realizing dreams and accomplishing goals.
At Tutor Tots, we teach your children the fundamentals they need to truly succeed.
Whether your child is struggling, has a desire to learn more or needs more of an academic challenge, our small, family-owned business provides a safe, nurturing environment where your child can shine.
Our Results-Driven Reading Programs
Reading is not a natural process. Written language is a code. At Tutor Tots, we teach the students how to crack the code. Certain combinations of letters represent certain sounds. We teach students to connect the sounds to the letters to decipher words. Knowing how to decode is essential, in order for students to become fluent readers or to understand what they are reading. Also, students may look like they are decoding, but they are actually using pictures to correctly guess words. Guessing is not an efficient way to identify new words.
What happens to students who have difficulty reading? The answer is they start to fall behind in school because the reading material gets more difficult as the grade increases, resulting in an unrewarding reading experience. The cognitive resources a student needs and uses to recognize a word leaves little left for comprehension, so the meaning of the reading passage is lost.
At Tutor Tots, we teach a blending of the phonemes and graphemes to get students reading. For example, s/a/t (three sounds to form the word "sat"), but then we look at s/a/ck (still three sounds but "ck" makes the "k" sound). We teach some of the rules needed to decode and help with writing. For example, s/a/ck, s/o/ck, and p/i/ck (the "ck" to make the "k" sound is at the end of a word that has a short vowel). For a long vowel, such as m/a/ke, the "k" sound is not "ck" but rather Bossy E. The student must also be able to recognize a phoneme in different words. For example /d/ in "dog," "dish," and "mad." We also teach blends, digraphs, Bossy E, Bossy R, soft and hard g, soft and hard c, vowel teams and much more to build reading and writing skills.
Studies show that only 1-7% of students figure out how to decode on their own, and even if your child is one of those, Tutor Tots can help fill in the gaps of spelling patterns or words he/she has not encountered yet.
What about older students? For older students, we focus on reading fluency (reading out loud with guidance and feedback) to assist reading. We work on vocabulary because studies show that when students truly understand the words, they become automatic recall for them. We teach comprehension strategies (analyzing, summarizing, question asking, inferences, parts of a story, et cetera), and how to extract answers from the reading passage and put those thoughts down on paper. We also look at decoding words and spelling rules to assist with writing.
It is important to remember that many struggling students start to lose their confidence. They start to ask themselves why others "get it" and they don't. They start to recognize they are not doing as well as others, resulting in less hand raising in class and withdrawing themselves from anything that involves participation. Alternatively, they start lowering their expectations for themselves, in an effort to protect themselves from poor grades. They will say, "I'm not good at reading." These words become a "defence mechanism," protecting them from any poor grades they may receive, but these words can also create a barrier to learning because students no longer have higher expectations for themselves. For some students, when they reach this point, pushing them beyond this newly-acquired comfort zone can be very difficult. So, at Tutor Tots we not only focus on teaching core materials, but we also focus on building self-confidence, teaching students how to handle setbacks and how mistakes are just another opportunity to learn. We start to replace poorer habits and negative self-talk with better habits and more positive thinking.
Our combination programs are all individualized and results-driven programs that we are very proud to offer to our students.
What happens to students who have difficulty reading? The answer is they start to fall behind in school because the reading material gets more difficult as the grade increases, resulting in an unrewarding reading experience. The cognitive resources a student needs and uses to recognize a word leaves little left for comprehension, so the meaning of the reading passage is lost.
At Tutor Tots, we teach a blending of the phonemes and graphemes to get students reading. For example, s/a/t (three sounds to form the word "sat"), but then we look at s/a/ck (still three sounds but "ck" makes the "k" sound). We teach some of the rules needed to decode and help with writing. For example, s/a/ck, s/o/ck, and p/i/ck (the "ck" to make the "k" sound is at the end of a word that has a short vowel). For a long vowel, such as m/a/ke, the "k" sound is not "ck" but rather Bossy E. The student must also be able to recognize a phoneme in different words. For example /d/ in "dog," "dish," and "mad." We also teach blends, digraphs, Bossy E, Bossy R, soft and hard g, soft and hard c, vowel teams and much more to build reading and writing skills.
Studies show that only 1-7% of students figure out how to decode on their own, and even if your child is one of those, Tutor Tots can help fill in the gaps of spelling patterns or words he/she has not encountered yet.
What about older students? For older students, we focus on reading fluency (reading out loud with guidance and feedback) to assist reading. We work on vocabulary because studies show that when students truly understand the words, they become automatic recall for them. We teach comprehension strategies (analyzing, summarizing, question asking, inferences, parts of a story, et cetera), and how to extract answers from the reading passage and put those thoughts down on paper. We also look at decoding words and spelling rules to assist with writing.
It is important to remember that many struggling students start to lose their confidence. They start to ask themselves why others "get it" and they don't. They start to recognize they are not doing as well as others, resulting in less hand raising in class and withdrawing themselves from anything that involves participation. Alternatively, they start lowering their expectations for themselves, in an effort to protect themselves from poor grades. They will say, "I'm not good at reading." These words become a "defence mechanism," protecting them from any poor grades they may receive, but these words can also create a barrier to learning because students no longer have higher expectations for themselves. For some students, when they reach this point, pushing them beyond this newly-acquired comfort zone can be very difficult. So, at Tutor Tots we not only focus on teaching core materials, but we also focus on building self-confidence, teaching students how to handle setbacks and how mistakes are just another opportunity to learn. We start to replace poorer habits and negative self-talk with better habits and more positive thinking.
Our combination programs are all individualized and results-driven programs that we are very proud to offer to our students.
Our Results-Driven Math Programs
We are also very proud of our math programs that focus on honing the skills required to successfully move through the grades. Math is cumulative. It's like a stack of building blocks. You have to understand one topic in order to "build upon" the next. Studies show that students in middle school with C's in math have learned about half of what they need to know for high school.
At Tutor Tots we strive to ensure that students understand the key concepts, such as addition and subtraction with regrouping, multiplication, division, and word problems. We implement different strategies and provide students with many different resources to improve their math skills.
At Tutor Tots we strive to ensure that students understand the key concepts, such as addition and subtraction with regrouping, multiplication, division, and word problems. We implement different strategies and provide students with many different resources to improve their math skills.
At Tutor Tots, we promise to:
Facilitate thinking
Engage minds
Listen to questions
Encourage risk
Support struggle
Cultivate dreams
Learn everyday
Laugh
Facilitate thinking
Engage minds
Listen to questions
Encourage risk
Support struggle
Cultivate dreams
Learn everyday
Laugh
Tutor Tots offers private virtual online tutoring classes through LearnCube. LearnCube has been specifically designed for tutors and teachers. It is a cloud-based learning tool with no downloads required.
Book your FREE trial today.
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All children need is a little help, a little hope,
and people who believe in them.
and people who believe in them.