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Published writer with perfect ACT English Score
Barbara M.

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Hourly Rate: $40
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About Barbara

Bio

I am a professional, published writer with a college degree and hundreds of articles under my byline. I have also been a substitute teacher for K-12 in the Charlotte County, FL public schools, as well as a volunteer school tutor in Fairfax County, VA. I have taught entire classrooms, small groups and one-on-one tutoring.

I received a perfect score on the English ACT and near-perfect scores on other English aptitude and achievement tests, both composition and grammar sections. I am a...

I am a professional, published writer with a college degree and hundreds of articles under my byline. I have also been a substitute teacher for K-12 in the Charlotte County, FL public schools, as well as a volunteer school tutor in Fairfax County, VA. I have taught entire classrooms, small groups and one-on-one tutoring.

I received a perfect score on the English ACT and near-perfect scores on other English aptitude and achievement tests, both composition and grammar sections. I am a member of the Mensa high IQ society.

Yet, I'm a down-to-earth, friendly person, patient and understanding, and l take the time to determine each student's needs and how each one learns best.

In addition to learning grammar and different types of writing, even young students can learn to improve their writing by varying sentence structure, breaking long paragraphs into smaller ones, the difference between a sentence and a phrase, and using descriptive words to create mental images.

I teach older students to capture readers' interest with unusual openings, hold their interest, and wrap up with dynamic and satisfying conclusions.

I believe what makes me a good tutor is that I genuinely enjoy working with children and teenagers. I do not complete students' work for them. Rather, I lead and guide them to form their own answers and develop their own style.

Whenever possible, I prefer to know in advance the type of material we will be working on during each tutoring session so I can come to the session prepared with additional resource materials and advance thought.

My schedule is flexible and I am available every day of the week. If you cannot attend a scheduled session, please reschedule in advance instead of just failing to show up for our session. I look forward to hearing from you!

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Education

University of Pittsburgh
English

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Approved Subjects

Elementary (K-6th)

Elementary (K-6th)

I have a college degree and over 15 years of experience writing for children and adults on many subjects. I have worked with children working with children in many different environments: one-on-one, tutoring a group, and teaching an entire class.
Elementary Math

Elementary Math

Since I substitute teach mostly in elementary school, I teach the classes all subjects, including math. I am teaching currently, so I am familiar with the newest and current methods of teaching various aspects of math. Math curricula is always changing, and new strategies for solving equations and problems are always being invented. Although I sometimes scratch my head and wonder what was wrong with the old way, which often seems more direct, I have seen some children catch on to the idea using a different strategy. In any case, I am familiar with the many new ideas and therefore capable of tutoring today's children in math, trying different methods to help them understand a concept.
English

English

I studied English in college and, as a substitute teacher, I taught both reading and writing. When teaching in elementary school, it's very important to help students in those formative grades to be comfortable reading, writing, and editing their own work. I have been a published freelance writer for more than 15 years, writing for newspapers, magazines and businesses. My specialty is writing conversationally, using correct grammar but without it sounding stilted or too formal (unless, or course, it's for a very formal purpose). I encourage students to write in their own voice, and where correct grammar sounds too formal, to rewrite it another way.
Grammar

Grammar

I seem to have an "ear" for correct English grammar; it always made sense to me. Before I knew the individual rules of grammar, I still knew correct usage. I'm able to explain to students why their usage is grammatically incorrect, e.g. the subject and verb must agree in tense, number, etc., regardless how many other words may lie between them. Most importantly, I give students "tricks" for checking verb/subject agreement, whether to use I or me, how to tell a comma is missing, etc. As a working writer, I keep up on changes in grammar, usage and punctuation as rules do change.
Prealgebra

Prealgebra

I studied math through calculus and statistics in college, including Algebra I and II, and geometry (which is sometimes needed in Algebra II), so prealgebra is not a problem. Since I teach currently in elementary schools, and prealgebra is typically taught in 5th and 6th grades, I have taught the subject recently. Though prealgebra sounds intimidating, it really just covers concepts that lead to studying algebra, and form the basic foundation to understanding it.
Reading

Reading

I find that many students who struggle with reading are intimidated by it. They're afraid of sounding out words incorrectly, and they find they often don't remember what they read. Reading is an integral part of the elementary school curriculum and is used throughout the day, whether the subject is reading, social studies or science. I work with students of all reading levels. My strategy is to provide lots of encouragement as they read, compliment them when they sound out (or even try to) a difficult word, and praise them for volunteering to read out loud. A very tall student, sitting by herself at a lunch table, told me she was held back the previous year because of her reading. "It's wonderful that you know that, because now you know what to work on, and you have this whole year to do it!" I said to her, and her eyes lit up with the thought. A bit of encouragement goes a long way.
Spelling

Spelling

Like grammar, I was always a born speller; it always came naturally to me. Though I've heard that English spelling often doesn't make sense to foreign students because there are so many exceptions, basic spelling rules make sense to me. I can look at a list of words and pick out those that are misspelled; they just don't "look right." That's not a good enough explanation for people who aren't "natural" spellers, however. I help students group similarly spelled words, explain the pattern, and then discuss other words that would be spelled the same way. A Kindergarten class I taught recently could not read well yet, but they were learning short vowel sounds. So we went over words such as hat, cat, sat and bat, noted the short "a" followed by the "t," and then they spelled pat, rat and fat.
Vocabulary

Vocabulary

Vocabulary does NOT come naturally to me. So I learned to look for the root of a word and think of another word with the same root whose meaning I do know, and see if applying the root's definition to the new word makes sense in the context of the sentence. To help students take vocabulary tests, I show them how to look for the root of the unfamiliar word, determine what the root word means, and see if that basic definition -- or one that's similar -- is in their list of answers.
Writing

Writing

I am a published author of newspaper and magazine articles and books, and have won numerous awards for my work. I also often ghostwrite for business executives' articles and columns that appear in major publications. I am known for writing unusual openings that grab readers' attention, varying sentence style and adding interesting facts that keep readers' reading, and wrapping up with memorable conclusions that encourage readers to take action or learn more. With students I tutor, I try to spark an interest in writing by showing them the infinite possibilities of subjects and approaches, and instilling confidence that they can write well if they just let go of their fears and give it a try.
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Hourly Rate: $40
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