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Literacy Intervention for Grades K-5

An independent tutoring service offering individualized instruction in reading, writing, spelling, and handwriting to learners in grades K-5 located in Upper Montclair, NJ. Click the button below to take the next step toward helping your child.

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Your Elementary Reading Tutor in Montclair, NJ

Hello! My name is Ms. Antonia Ballare, and I’m proud to be an independent elementary reading tutor in Montclair, NJ. From here in Essex County, I provide high-quality literacy intervention services to support struggling readers as well as below-grade-level and dyslexic learners. Throughout my career, I’ve earned a glowing reputation for using the Orton-Gillingham multi-sensory approach in an individualized one-on-one setting. This approach combines both visual/auditory and kinesthetic-tactile strategies to help young people enhance their reading, writing, spelling, and handwriting skills. As an Orton-Gillingham method tutor, I’m confident that this holistic and unparalleled approach will help the young person in your life build the literacy skills, self-assuredness, and insight they need to thrive in academic settings. It is my hope that the skills, techniques, and approaches that I champion will help young readers and learners develop a lifelong appreciation of literacy, books, and the pursuit of self-improvement.

Ms. Ballare provides literacy intervention to young readers in her studio.

Meet Ms. Toni as she prepares a lesson in her studio.

I encourage you to reach out to me today with any questions you may have about my services, my experience, or my approach to struggling readers’ intervention. I’ll be more than happy to answer your questions, respond to your inquiries, and address your concerns. Through effective and efficient communication, I aim to provide all the details you need to make the best decision for your young reader.

Literacy Intervention SERVICES

As a literacy intervention tutor, my goal is to make it both effective and enjoyable. To prevent and treat reading challenges in young children who are not meeting desirable standards at their respective grade levels, I employ a variety of research-based interventions. Also, as an elementary reading tutor, I strive to create a welcoming atmosphere, provide professional services, and ensure a rewarding experience by:

Incorporating multi-sensory activities, materials, tools, and devices from an extensive collection for literacy intervention.

Meeting learners and parents in my comfortable home studio in Upper Montclair, Essex County, New Jersey.
Encouraging parent participation during lessons and at home.
Maintaining a library of professional books, children’s trade books, and leveled books for guided reading.
Staying up-to-date through professional memberships, continuous reading, webinars, and online courses.
Assessing learners’ needs and strengths precisely.

Analyzing test results with skill and insight.
Using ongoing assessment in preparing lessons.
Teaching skills sequentially and explicitly to meet the specific needs of each learner.
Applying research-based strategies in print awareness, phonological awareness, phonics, comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, and writing to build and strengthen literacy skills.
Adhering to the New Jersey Student Learning Standards for English Language Arts (ELA).

Supporting the Response to Intervention (RTI) model.
Promoting wide reading at both instructional and independent levels.
Sustaining high interest using Orton-Gillingham-based and multi-sensory structured language approaches to enhance memory and learning via visual/auditory and kinesthetic-tactile learning pathways in the brain.
Incorporating multi-sensory activities simultaneously, using materials, tools, and devices from an extensive collection.

Visual/auditory (variety of print material including leveled books for guided reading, trade books, board games, card games, word walls, posters, charts, tables, maps, flashcards, and graphic organizers. Drawing, flannel boards, story rolls, reading aloud, retelling, singing, digital self-recording, read-aloud, e-books, whisper phones, and more.)

Kinesthetic-tactile (letter tiles, letter stamps, phonics cubes, flashcards, board games, card games, Twister game, walking-jumping-hopping while speaking/listening, pocket charts, search-the-room, air writing, writing on whiteboards and chart paper, and on grade-level-appropriate lined paper, and more.)

Photo Gallery

Click each picture to find out how I help young readers while having fun!

These tools aid the kinesthetic-tactile learning of correct letter formation.

Learners match homonyms with their images by remembering their placement on the gameboard. Also called Memory, this game has numerous other applications.

This graphic organizer helps learners analyze a story for its exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Here, we use a favorite, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka.

With this graphic organizer we compare and contrast two versions of a folk tale called Stone Soup.

Young children enjoy placing each animal in the lady's tummy as they recite from memory the poem called I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.

Placing illustrations on a flannel board supports the sequential oral retelling of this first-grade-level guided reading story called I Broke It from www.readinga-z.com.

Modeled after the TV game of Jeopardy, this upper-elementary-level game requires knowledge of vocabulary at four levels of difficulty using six ways to spell the long e sound.

We are the Ship by Kadir Nelson, about the unsung heroes of baseball, holds the interest of upper-elementary readers/writers as they become skillful at note-taking, paraphrasing and expository writing.

What the Research Tells Us...

Young students overcoming difficulty with language and reading.

"Students of all backgrounds and intellectual talents may experience difficulty with language and reading that erodes their overall academic achievement."

(Stanovich and Siegel, 1994)

scientifically based interventions can rewire a child’s brain so that it is virtually indistinguishable from that of a child who had never had a reading problem

"We have strong brain imaging evidence that scientifically based interventions can rewire a child’s brain so that it is virtually indistinguishable from that of a child who had never had a reading problem."

(Shaywitz, 2005)

Child in first grade improving her reading skills.

"It takes four times as long to remediate a student with poor reading skills in fourth grade as in late kindergarten or early first grade."

(Lyon and Fletcher, 2001)

Using the same techniques we recommend for teaching beginning readers can be used effectively with students in fourth grade and beyond.

"Many of the same techniques we recommend for teaching beginning readers can be used effectively with students in fourth grade and beyond and with similar results."

(O’Connor, 2014)

"Time and again, the point at which a parent faces a child’s learning problem is the turning point for the child’s whole future."

(Hall and Moats, 2002)

"The principles of instruction and content of a multi-sensory structured language program are essential for effective teaching methodologies."

(The International Dyslexia Association, 2000)

Using methods that support an explicit, systematic, cumulative, and multi-sensory approach that integrates listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

"The most effective teachers use methods that support an explicit, systematic, cumulative, and multi-sensory approach that integrates listening, speaking, reading, and writing."

(Baron et al., 2018)

An older child becoming a skilled, passionate, habitual, and critical reader.

"The ultimate purpose of reading instruction is to help children become skilled, passionate, habitual, and critical readers."

(Atwell, 2014)

My Experience

10+ years as a private independent reading tutor in my home studio in Upper Montclair, New Jersey
35+ years as a teacher and reading coach in Essex and Union counties, NJ
Modeled literacy best practices with students and for teachers as a Reading First Coach, Linden Public Schools, NJ
Certified elementary classroom teacher and language arts team leader, South Orange-Maplewood Public Schools, NJ
Published author, two books for teachers
M. Ed. in Elementary Reading, Boston University, MA
B.A. in Elementary Education, Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey)

CONTACT

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﻿Just Plain English

Literacy Intervention for Grades K-5﻿

An independent tutoring service offering individualized instruction in reading, writing, spelling, and handwriting to learners in grades K-5﻿ located in Upper Montclair, NJ. Click the button below to take the next step toward helping your child.