ALPHABET SUGGESTIONS
Some beginning students need to brush up on their knowledge of the alphabet. An easy exercise is for tutor and student to stand several feet apart and to toss a soft ball or bean bag back and forth between each other while taking turns naming the letters of the alphabet. The same routine can be varied by using words in alphabetical order e.g. place names, foods, single syllable words, etc. The routine need only take a few minutes, and the activity can give a student a welcome opportunity to move around during the lesson.

PREPARATION IS THE KEY!
New tutors may find themselves overwhelmed by the demands of getting started on tutoring with a student who is new to them -- using a method (Orton Gillingham) which may be new to both of them. It is essential to have a lesson plan which allows for six or seven short activities which tap into many areas of need and move the lesson along. Suggestions include:

1. Alphabet work -- from working with "chips", looking up a couple of definitions for vocabulary words in the dictionary, to putting word cards in alphabetical order -- depending on student's level of need
2. Handwriting, especially cursive exercises to remediate size and clarity of letters
3. Reading deck and or spelling deck
4. Syllable work e.g. as in Wilson workbooks
5. Spelling rule to discuss/review, and practice dictation
6. "Red Alert" words, i.e. those that have to be memorized. Introduce 2/3 at a time.
7. Tutor and student reading together -- taking alternate paragraphs
   Some days you will get through a list. Another time you will complete two or three activities and then just have time to move to reading for the last 10 minutes. Be flexible. Relax and have fun!