Peer Tutor Training: Focus on short and long term student outcomes

Course description

This example shows how the Planner and Survey could be used for a course in which teachers and support staff are trained to coordinate and train elementary/middle school peer tutors. This particular peer tutoring intervention is designed to improve students' a) basic reading skills, b) reading comprehension skills related to the 4th and 8th grade New York State English Language Arts Examination (ELA), and c) test taking skills necessary for the ELA. Staff are taught how to train tutors in the tutoring procedures and monitor whether tutors follow the procedures as outlined.

Multiple choice questions for the tutoring activity were developed for stories in the district's basal series. Tutors ask these questions, which are based on a task analysis of the ELA, at designated points in the story.

To assess whether the program was implemented as planned, a procedural checklist is completed by both the tutor and tutor trainer. This checklist also serves to remind tutors of what they need to do. To assess progress of students being tutored, school psychology interns and teacher assistants have been monitoring student basic reading skills using Curriculum Based Assessment (CBA) as part of the schools' pre-referral intervention process. Also, student responses to multiple choice questions are recorded for teacher review of student progress. Below is the Staff Development Impact Planner that was completed by the course instructor.

 The Staff Development Impact Planner was completed by the course instructor. It prioritized key objectives from the staff development, and prompted the trainer to describe possible ways of assessing implementation of training objectives and student outcomes as a result of the program.

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Below is a Staff Development Impact Survey completed by the course participant. The course participant based the ratings on completed checklists, student assessment and his knowledge of how key objectives were implemented. The Impact Survey also gave the course participant the opportunity to describe difficulties implementing the course objectives, as well as strategies for successful implementation.

Supporting Assessment and documentation of impact:

The three methods of assessing implementation and impact are presented below:

• A procedural checklist completed by the trainer or coach and the tutors as a self evaluation checklist
• Response sheets from multiple choice questions asked during the tutoring sessions
• A completed graph of Curriculum Based Assessment reading data showing student gains in response to the tutoring sessions

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Peer Tutoring activity: Tutors and or trainers collect information about adherence with the program steps

In this example, tutors complete a self-rating form that describes the essential steps to peer tutoring. This form can also be used by program coordinators to check for tutor follow through and can also serve as a series of prompts for tutors to follow.

Peer Tutoring Activity: Tutors collecting information about student outcomes

In this example, student tutors record whether or not the students they are tutoring were able to answer the multiple choice questions correctly. Teachers are then able to see the types of questions, corresponding with English Language Arts objectives, certain students are having difficulty with. Teachers may also assess informally whether or not students being tutored answer more questions correctly in response to the tutoring activity.

These multiple choice questions, for stories in the Harcourt Brace Signature Series, were developed based on a task analysis of the New York State 4th and 8th grade English Language Arts examination. Each series of questions prompts the tutor where to stop and read the questions to the student being tutored (tutee). The tutor copy of the questions includes the correct answer (underlined) so that the tutor can give accurate feedback to the tutee. The tutor also has a box in which he or she indicates whether or not the tutee answered the question correctly.

Below are questions covered for four days of tutoring in which the students responded to four sets of questions. Following the scoring sheets is a table that shows the types of questions that the tutee answered correctly and incorrectly. Can you identify the questions that the tutee is having the most difficulty answering?

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Results of Curriculum Based Assessment in reading:

The graph below clearly shows impact of the program on an individual student's basic reading skills.

The course participant is able to use two of the above assessments to know if the peer tutoring program is working overall as well as for individual students. This information can also be used to document impact of the inservice course on student outcomes by considering these assessments when completing the Survey Likert items on student outcomes. These documents may also be copied and provided to the course instructor.

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