Alissa

Rate €60
Response 5h
Students
Number of students Alissa has accompanied since arriving at Superprof
3
Number of students Alissa has accompanied since arriving at Superprof

€60/h

English
Reading
Literacy
Spelling

K-12 Reading/Writing Built on Science of Reading: Comprehension, Essay Writing, and Decoding

English
Reading
Literacy
Spelling

Lesson location

- online

About Alissa

Hi, I'm Alissa! I graduated from the University of Washington with a B.S. in Bioengineering, a B.A. in Music, and a minor in Applied Mathematics. I've been teaching in some capacity since 2018, and tutoring is now my full-time work. I've worked with students from ages 3 to 37, including students with ADHD, autism, and giftedness, and I teach literacy, math, and science.
I choose to teach because I noticed specific barriers to students' learning:
- Decoding stops at phonics. Most schools now teach phonics and phonemic awareness well, then stop. English also encodes meaning, which is why "sign" and "signature" share a spelling that phonics alone can't explain. Skipping morphology leaves students memorizing the words English supposedly gets wrong.
- Comprehension gets treated as a skill to practice. Answering questions about a passage doesn't build the ability to understand the next one. Comprehension depends on decoding fluently enough to free up attention, plus vocabulary and background knowledge about the subject. I target what's actually blocking understanding rather than assigning more passages.
- Writing gets assigned, not taught. Students are told to plan, revise, and support a thesis without ever being shown how any of those work. I teach writing as a sequence of skills that starts with the sentence and builds from there, whether a student is composing their first one or drafting a college application essay.
- Out of date teaching methods. I'm a researcher at heart; I regularly read recently published evidence related to cognitive and instructional science, and update my materials accordingly. Because I read the literature directly, I can act on it now instead of waiting for it to filter down.
I also teach math and science. Having a single educator across all subjects means consistency: no rebuilding a personal relationship or reexplaining your unique learning needs.

About the lesson

Reading isn't a naturally acquired skill. Spoken language develops on its own; written language has to be taught, because the brain has no dedicated system for it. Skilled reading is built by connecting letters to sounds until words are recognized instantly, without effort. My instruction is explicit and systematic: skills are taught directly in a deliberate order, and each one builds on the last.

Decoding and spelling: we start with phonemic awareness, the ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words, because it's the foundation everything else rests on. From there we move to phonics, orthographic mapping, and morphology, which is the study of meaningful word parts like roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Morphology is where reading, spelling, and vocabulary stop being separate subjects; the silent “g” in “sign” stops looking arbitrary once a student meets “signal” and “signature.” Instruction is multi-sensory, adding movement and touch alongside listening and looking, which opens pathways to language distinct from the ones that tend to be weaker in dyslexic readers. I design and 3D print my own manipulatives, so students can physically move sounds, syllables, and word parts while working through a concept.

Comprehension: understanding a text depends on the reader, the text, and what the reading is for. A student can decode perfectly and still miss the point of a science article because they lack the background knowledge it assumes. We work on vocabulary, inference, and strategies for monitoring your own understanding. We also read widely on purpose, across argument, reporting, technical writing, and fiction, because instruction built on one kind of passage produces one kind of reader. Students learn to ask who wrote a text, who it was written for, and what the author wanted from that audience.

Writing: spelling and reading failures often trace to the same gaps, so the word-level work carries directly into written expression. Sentence composition starts in kindergarten with scaffolds that come off as vocabulary and spelling build. In elementary and middle school we add planning, paragraph and essay structure, sentence-expansion work, and varying sentence structure for flow. In high school, thesis construction and supporting an argument with evidence, plus narrative writing, which the college application process demands and most classrooms neglect. I support argumentative, narrative, expository, and analytical essays, and college application statements.

I integrate executive function strategies into my instruction. Writing in particular demands planning, working memory, and self-monitoring all at once, which is why a student who understands the assignment can still stare at a blank page. We externalize the steps, build routines for catching your own errors, and break a task into a first move small enough to actually begin.

After every session, parents get a written summary with my observations and whatever measurable data that session produced. Older students get it too, so they learn how to identify patterns and self-correct.

The first session is free, and includes a diagnostic assessment, with no obligation to continue. It's a low stakes way for parents, students, and me to see if we're the right fit.

Rates

Rate

€60

Pack rates

5 h: €300
10 h: €600

online

€60/h

K-12 Reading/Writing Built on Science of Reading: Comprehension, Essay Writing, and Decoding

Lesson location

About Alissa

About the lesson

Rates

Rate

Pack rates

online

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K-12 Reading/Writing Built on Science of Reading: Comprehension, Essay Writing, and Decoding

Lesson location

About Alissa

About the lesson

Rates

Rate

Pack rates

online

Other tutors in English

Christiana

Tatjana

Lisa

Zat

Njietube Ewonge

Clementina

Rubeena

Dan

Obinna

Ana Leah

Boipelo veronicah

Ivan

SARAH

Zinash

An-Nikol

Agnes

Sara

Susanuduehi

Sehrin

Axel

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