Portals to Learning, founded by Marilyn Varricchio, provides tutoring services and private instruction to students in the Middlebury, Vermont area. We focus on individual strengths and needs and gear instruction to each student's unique learning profile. Our instruction is systematic and explicit and paced to assure learning, while engaging our students in meaningful educational experiences. Instruction is always interactive, and culminates in authentic learning activities.
We offer instruction in the following areas:
Basic Reading and Spelling Skills - Portals specializes in helping struggling readers build a strong foundation in early reading and spelling skills. We help our students develop an understanding of the complex system of printed English through careful, sequential, systematic instruction. Our teaching fosters the development of the alphabetic principle, the insight into how speech is represented by letters and letter groups, beginning with those that are the most straightforward and consistent and building to those that are more complex and variant. We often teach reading and spelling together, as reverse sides of the same linguistic coin. The system of rules and patterns that governs printed English can then more easily become obvious and usable for both reading and spelling.
Reading Fluency - The hallmark of skilled reading is fluent reading. At Portals, we help our students develop into readers who process text with automatic word recognition along with proper phrasing and expression, both at a rate sufficient to promote and enable comprehension.
Vocabulary Development - We know that reading comprehension relies on a broad knowledge base that includes specific word meanings and conceptual networks. At Portals, we help students develop a repertoire of word meanings, understanding each word's unique features and its relationships to other words. Our intent is to help students acquire rich, robust representations for words common to our printed and spoken language, as well as conceptual networks of content related words to aid in higher level comprehension and writing.
Reading Comprehension - At Portals, we teach comprehension using the S.P.O.K.E.S model. This model systematically and explicitly teaches students six essential tasks they must engage in, in order to comprehend text deeply. Each task is associated with numerous strategies that can assist in the comprehension process. Please see our course descriptions and web store for more information on the S.P.O.K.E.S. model.
Written Expression - Writing is the most complex task required of students. We know that writing skill can break down at numerous levels. At Portals, we explicitly teach to each level of writing, including sentence construction and formulation, word choice, paragraph organization and development, as well as story construction and informational writing in varied genres. We focus on both the process of writing and the specific skills and strategies needed to write effectively. Writing conventions are taught separately and applied during the editing phase of writing.
Mathematics - Our instruction in mathematics involves building conceptual knowledge and skills. We generally begin each mathematical area with work involving manipulative materials, using these to build mathematical knowledge and a deep conceptual understanding or our number system. As we move students away from a reliance on manipulatives, we help them build skills, constructing mental models that include visual, graphical, linguistic, and symbolic representations. Connections among math concepts and representations and practical applications of math learning are then stressed. Instruction in math is available for students at all levels, including high school algebra and geometry.
Study and Organizational Skills - At Portals, we help students learn skills and strategies for taking notes, managing time, organizing materials, and studying for and taking tests. Using school assignments and deadlines, we coach students in how to organize both their time and materials and the content of their academic courses, focusing on the big ideas presented in each class.
Developing Positive Behaviors - Portals to Learning offers the services of a Behavior Specialist to work with families and/or school teams in developing positive approaches for dealing with challenging behaviors.
