PINE STATE LEARNING
TUTORING SERVICES
Research Based Interventions That Work
Our programs are individualized remediation for reading, spelling, comprehension, writing, and math.
Reading, writing, and math difficulties rarely have a single cause, and they rarely respond to a single approach. A child who can't sound out words has a different underlying profile than a child who can decode but doesn't remember what they read. A child who struggles with math facts may have a fluency problem, a number sense problem, or both.
The question that matters most is why a child is struggling, because the answer determines what kind of instruction will actually help.
Our Intake Process
Every student at PSL begins with a comprehensive assessment. When we do not know much about a student's learning profile overall, we may recommend standardized assessments with us or our trusted providers, or a curriculum-based skills assessments that pinpoint exactly where in the skill progression a student's difficulties begin.
Pre-assessment allows us to create each student's learning map: identify the specific processing and academic skill gaps underlying the difficulty. We look at many sub-skills in each academic domain: phonological awareness, orthographic processing, rapid naming, number sense, working memory demands, or some combination. Those results determine which methodology to use, directly shape the individualized learning plan, where to begin in the curriculum, and what goals to set for instruction.
Multiple Research-Validated Methodologies
Different learning profiles require different interventions. Our clinicians are trained in multiple evidence-based programs and draw from the one (or combination) that fits each student's assessment data:​
Reading and Spelling:
Seeing Stars (Lindamood-Bell), Orton-Gillingham, LIPS (Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing), and Visualizing & Verbalizing (Lindamood-Bell). Each targets a distinct component of the reading system: symbol imagery, phonological awareness, morphological knowledge, or language comprehension.
Math:
Morningside Math and On Cloud Nine (Lindamood-Bell). Morningside builds computational fluency through precision teaching; On Cloud Nine develops the conceptual imagery that underlies number sense and mathematical reasoning. Math-U-See helps our older learners earn credit while getting the support they need for success.
Writing:
Landmark School's "From Talking to Writing," structured direct instruction in grammar, sentence construction, and paragraph organization. While the Writing Revolution works on higher level skills. Writing instruction is also integrated with reading and spelling work, because encoding skills develop alongside decoding.
How Our Instruction Is Structured
Students receive one-on-one instruction following an explicit teaching model: the clinician demonstrates, the student practices with support, then the student practices independently. Instruction is multisensory, using manipulatives and visual supports appropriate to the content area.
Each of our lessons is scaffolded from easy to a more difficult tasks.
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We report progress every 20 hours of instruction. Parent updates include detailed tracking of where the student is in the curriculum, what they've mastered, what they're currently working on, and what comes next.
Two Types of Schedules
All of our instruction is available in two scheduling formats. Concentrated or intensive schedules are designed for students who are more than two years behind grade level. These students meet with their tutor daily for a minimum of 90 minutes per day.
We have found that higher-frequency instruction helps close learning gaps quickly and allows students to get the skills they need and get on with their lives. During the summer this model of instruction is called our LEAP program, during the school year, we just call it intensive instruction.
Part-time after-school schedules offer a more relaxed pace for students who need consistent support alongside their regular school day. We typically meet with students a minimum of twice per week in order to ensure student progress.