The Tutor House

Your Someday is Today!

I'll start my tutor business someday....

I'll begin promoting my tutor business someday....

No more excuses! Your someday is today. Teachers pay Teachers is celebrating 3 million teachers strong! You may be thinking--wait how does this help me make my someday...today?!

Today, you'll be able to get answers to your questions about running your tutor business, marketing, and so much more---for a lot less! My entire store is 28% off over at TpT. Use promo code: TPT3 Sale ends on Friday! Get your business off to a great start with the items below:

The Novice Tutor: Answers to Your Questions About Running a Tutor Business

35 Ideas to Market Your Tutor Business

100 Facebook Status Updates for Tutors

Editable Tutor Forms

Looking for fun and engaging games? My store also has lots of file folder games, game cards, playing card math mats, and even graphic organizers for Algebra!

Today is your ~~Some~~day.

Thanks to Beth Ann of Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Designs

How to Prepare for Your First Reading Student

It’s Monday morning at 10:00am and you receive your first phone call from a parent requesting a reading tutor. Finally!! You have a new reading student, but what do you do now? How do you prepare for your new student? What materials and resources do you need to make sure your student is successful? How will you conduct your tutoring session? As a new tutor, it can be a daunting task to prepare for your first reading student. You are unsure about what materials you need and what questions you should ask the parent.

Here are some tips to help prepare for your first reading student:

Discuss the student’s reading weaknesses with the parent: Ask the parent whether the student has struggled with reading in the past. Also, ask the parent specifically what the child is struggling with. Does your child comprehend what they are reading? Is your child skipping words in a sentence? Is he/she guessing unknown words rather than sounding them out? Does he/she know the sounds associated with all the letters? Can your child accurately summarize the text? The parent will be able to provide you with insight about reading issues the child has at home. You should also ask the parent whether they read with their child on a regular basis to encourage reading in the home.

Communicate with Teacher: Communication with the teacher is important to the student’s success. Please make sure you have permission from the parent before you communicate with the teacher. Email communication is appropriate since teacher’s have busy schedules. The student’s teacher and reading teacher will be able to provide you with specific details about their reading weaknesses. They also have reading assessment results, such as DIEBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) they can share with you to help write your tutoring lesson plans.

Give the child your own reading assessment: Create a grade level appropriate reading assessment to administer to the student. Make sure your assessment addresses the weaknesses discussed with the parent and teacher. The assessment should be short and give the opportunities to read aloud. Read aloud allows you to gauge the child’s ability to reading. The use of a Reading Running Record will help you determine the “thinking process” of your student as they read the text. A quick Internet search will give you plenty of Reading Running Records. Also, make the assessment is kid-friendly, fun, and include a few interactive learning activities.

Create a learning plan for your child: After the assessment, create a weekly learning plan that addresses the weaknesses based on the assessment. The learning plan should also include grade level objectives based on Common Core Standards. Also, briefly discuss learning activities the student will complete during the plan. Create kid-friendly activities and use the library as a source for age appropriate books. The Internet has interactive Reading Comprehension activities that enhance tutoring sessions. Give the child a mini-assessment at the end of the learning plan to measure their competency in the areas of weaknesses. The learning plan can be adjusted based on the results from the learning plan assessment.

These tips will help you as you prepare for your first reading client! Remember….have fun and provide the best learning environment for your student!

Quinn Jones has extensive training in education and has experience teaching in the public school system and tutoring students. She is the Director of Rising Star Educational Services, which is a tutoring company that provides tutoring to students in grades K-12. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina and a Masters of Education degree in Educational Management from Strayer University in Washington, DC. Her love of learning and teaching drives her to help motivate the success of her clients.

You can connect with Quinn on Facebook or find her at www.risingstareducationalservices.com

Tutor Tag Lines

What's a tagline?

It's a catch phrase or slogan used to capture a potential client's attention. You can use taglines on your flyers, brochures, business cards, Facebook fan page, and even your website! Anywhere you would like to grab some attention to your business, consider using one of these taglines.

With the help of my Just for Tutors Facebook group, we created a comprehensive list of taglines. We've organized it by general and monthly themes to help you find the best tag line for your needs today.

General:

Fractions got you down?
Keep Calm and Get a Tutor
It's easier to keep up than catch up. Let's keep up your grades together.
Think like a proton and stay positive!
Need help with math? You can count on me.
Count to three and learn to read!
__________ is bitter but the fruit is sweet.
Soaring for Success!
Our students come first.
Educate! Being smart is great.
Tutoring gets results.
Tutoring. Learn to love learning again.
Isn't it time for higher grades?
Learn math.
It's time to learn.
Find your own learning path. I can help!
Keep Calm and Get a Tutor
Test jitters?
Go forth and conquer your SAT/ACT!
Get it write! (writing)

January:

Ring in the new year with better grades
Got the School Blues?
Ring in the New Year with Better Grades!
Stop the Brain Freeze!

February:

Not loving school? I can help!
Not loving homework? Let me help.
Not feeling the love from math?

March:
Turn over a new leaf with your grades
Come into full bloom with tutoring!

April:

Egg-cellent idea...Tutor Time!
You're Some Bunny that Can Make the Grade
Get the best o'luck with your grades!

May:

Spring into summer!
Bee a smart student!
Can you see it? Good grades are in the air! (kite clip art)

June:

Avoid the summer slide, get caught up this with tutoring!
Don't slide in the summertime.

July:

Hooray for Red, White, and Blue! We're the tutoring place for you!
I want you to excel in school (use Uncle Sam clip art)

August:

It's easier to stay caught up, than play catch up! Reserve your tutoring spot today.
Back to School, keep your cool!

September:

Are your grades all falling down?

October:

Got Spooky Grades? Get a tutor!
Are your grades making you a little batty?
Bubble, bubble, boil, and trouble...better grades on the double!

November:

Fall into reading! (or any subject)
Looking for an attitude of gratitude towards math?

December:

Are your grades making you a Grinch?
Got Ho-Ho-Hum Grades?
Are good grades on your Christmas list?

Next month, I'll be featuring a free tagline for spring! Be sure to follow along through my subscriber list or Facebook.!

Tutor Bloggers to Follow

When I started this blog two years ago, I felt like a lone ranger. I knew of tutoring websites, but no blogs quite like mine focused solely on tutoring business and resources. I was intrigued by all the teacher blogs popping up and thought that maybe there would be other tutors like me that would be interested in exchanging ideas.

It was a bumpy road and I felt like I wasn't sure who was really reading. In 2013, more tutors began to find my blog and a community has blossomed out of it! I couldn't be more excited to be blazing a fairly new trail in this blogging world.

Fast forward to today and I am finding more and more tutor bloggers like me! While there are not hundreds of us out there today, some day there will be--I just know it!

If you have a tutor blog, will you please link up with me? All you need to do are these simple steps.

1. Grab the image above.

2. Write a blog post on your own blog about why you started a tutor blog.

3. Within your post, include this image above.

4. Link back to my website or post within your blog post. For example, "I am linking up with Adrianne of The Tutor House today..."

5. Publish your post

6. Come back here and link up using your blog post URL.

Link Up Below! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask down below in the comments.

Dreaming of Teaching

Have you always wanted to be a teacher? Did you play "teacher" as a child with your friends? Did you find your passion for teaching later in life? It has been hard for teachers to find work within the school system. You don't have to give up your dream of being a teacher! Today, Rachel shares her dream of being a teacher...though it didn't come quite as she expected. -Adrianne

My name is Rachel and I am a teacher. I have always dreamed of being a teacher, literally since I was about eight years old. At this time, however, I am not teaching in a public or private school, and I don’t have my own classroom with my name on the door. Let me tell you more.

I graduated in 2011 with a degree in Elementary Education. Since then, I’ve had a disheartening journey of applications and interviews as I’ve looked for a full time teaching job. I applied to anything and everything I could within an hour radius of where I lived. I spent countless hours poring over my resume and extensive questions on each application. I was up against hundreds of other applicants in my area for a very small number of open positions. It was quite challenging to stand out when I didn’t have years of teaching experience already under my belt. It never happened - I never got that call saying I got my dream job.
In the meantime, I worked in several schools as a substitute teacher and a paraprofessional, always thinking it would be temporary and I would end up teaching. It barely paid enough, especially as a para, and I knew I wanted to do more. I wasn’t going to give up my teaching dream though, because being a teacher is ingrained in me.

I decided to take matters into my own hands, get out of the school system, and try something else. Over the past few months I have started my own tutoring business, created a website and blog, and started selling teaching resources online. I also work at an online scrapbooking company in marketing, sales, and customer service. I am using my teaching skills, just not in a classroom for now. If you’re in the same situation as me, don’t give up! Here are a few things I have learned on my journey.

You don’t have to have your own classroom to be a teacher. I see amazing teachers everywhere: a homeschool mom/dad, volunteers coming into a classroom to read or help out in any way, a substitute teacher, a paraprofessional, a student teacher, a coach, a tutor, an online educator, part time, full time, or anytime. There are so many different kinds of teachers in the world. I wholeheartedly believe that you can always teach no matter where you are.

Tutoring is much more flexible than working in a classroom. Since I’m not tied to a school calendar, I get to set my own hours and work on things when I have time. Yes I miss those snow days, but having flexible hours makes up for it.

Starting my own tutoring business has allowed me to learn valuable business and marketing skills that I probably wouldn’t have picked up otherwise. I’ve learned how to create a website, how to set up a blog, and various ways to promote both my tutoring and my teaching products online.

I don’t get sick as much! When I was working in kindergarten and first grade classrooms, I was sick constantly. I had long drawn out colds that would last months. Now, with my one-on-one tutoring, I rarely get a cold.

Tutoring gives me the opportunity to work with various grade levels. I can teach a wider range of subjects and interact with kids of different ages.

Connecting with other tutors, teachers, and bloggers online has exposed me to a broad range of new ideas and concepts. I might not have had time to do these things while teaching in a classroom.

For now, I don’t know what exactly the future holds for me. I do know that I’m content with being able to help out kids and other teachers through my tutoring and by creating teaching resources. Maybe one day I’ll end up with my own classroom, or maybe not. No matter what happens, though, I’ll always be a teacher.

You can connect with Rachel here: Blog - Tutoring Website - My Store Facebook - Pinterest

School house photo credit: SweetJessie

Math is Real Life: Pantry Renovation

We moved into a new house this summer. There were plenty of closets in the house, but two of them were pretty useless. One was a tiny pantry located inside the kitchen and a closet just five steps away from the kitchen.

This closet had shelves that were about 10 inches wide and 10 inches apart. I could not even stand up cereal boxes in this closet. My mind started turning...what to do? Then it hit me one evening. Behind it is a walk in closet in a room that is used just for the family office. We could knock down the wall between the two closets and make one giant pantry! I told my husband my idea and he was sold.

It was a family effort. We all took turns knocking the wall down. Every single one of us was excited to get a new pantry space. Little did I realize it would take us three months to complete!

Math was involved in this entire project, but one aspect that took a little more thought was the placement of the door. We wanted to reuse the door that connected to the walk in closet. Our plan was to seal off the walk in closet and move that door into the pantry opening. This would involve a little geometry using translations to get the placement just right.

We could begin with a rotation of the door by 90 degrees. Then slide it down to the adjacent wall. Now we would have to decide where to place the door. In the left corner or the right--maybe right in the middle? Where should the shelves go?

Another option would be to reflect (flip) the door across the wall so that the door opens out into the hallway. But--from a practicality side...that would just plain be annoying. Let's stick with the door opening into the closet.

After much debate, we chose to put the door swinging in and all the way to the right so the door was against the wall. Our shelves were 18 inches wide and had various heights for different foods.

How can you use this real world
example with students?

This example would work great as a small group project or introduction to real world applications of translations. Give your students a piece of graph paper and have them draw out a 4' x 6' room with a 2.5' wide door. Allow them to use translations to show how they would move the door around. Then have them select how wide their shelves would need to be to make the best use of this space.

Interested in more real life applications of math? Check out this monthly linky below.

A monthly REAL WORLD math blog link-up hosted by

4mulaFun, Fourth Grade Studio, Teaching to Inspire in 5th, AND MissMathDork,

Super Sale on TpT!

Super Secondary Sale

February 2, 2014

20% off my TpT Shop All Day!

I am teaming up with a bunch of amazing secondary teachers to bring screaming sales to go with all the screaming that I am sure will be going on during the game on February 2nd!

Be sure to head over to my shop and swoop up any of my eBooks or games at 20% off! Grab 'em while you can...the sale ends at midnight central time.

Shops Participating:

Study All Knight -- Juggling ELA -- The SuperHero Teacher -- The Creative Classroom

A Space to Create -- Teaching High School Math -- 4mula Fun

All Things Algebra -- Miss Math Dork -- James Whitaker -- For the Love of Teaching Math

The Classroom Sparrow -- Teaching Math by Hart -- 2 Peas and a Dog