To engage fully in school and society, children need to learn how to decode text and read it fluently with understanding. Our literacy recommendations are evidence-based and tailored to students' learning needs. For our youngest learners, we recommend a shared book reading program that engages PK children in dialogic reading to promote print awareness and early numeracy skills. For early elementary learners who are still working on phonemic awareness and decoding, we recommend an evidence-based supplemental early reading program that has been shown to have the strong positive effects on alphabetics, comprehension, and reading fluency. For learners who have moved past decoding, we recommend a literacy program based on the IES What Works Practice Guides for literacy instruction. Our instructional routine includes telling stories and poems; word study and explicit instruction of academic vocabulary in the context of reading rich connected text; purposeful fluency-building activities, conversations that support narrative and inferential language skills; explicit instruction of comprehension strategies; and writing. Our tutors are trained to work in children's zone of proximal development and can help every learner achieve their educational goals-- from developing and practicing specific foundational skills to enrichment and acceleration.

We also coach tutors to lead the Alexandria Award Book Club, a unique enrichment opportunity for children in the middle grades. Students meet with one of our experienced literacy tutors in small groups (2-3 students per group) once a week for an hour to read, discuss, and work on activities related to a book endorsed by Notre Dame's Alexandria Award Committee. Tutors have led clubs for students to read and discuss every winner, including 2021 winner, When Stars Are Scattered; 2022 winner, Scythe; 2023 winner, A Wish in the Dark. We plan to offer clubs to discuss the 2024 winner this spring! The Alexandria Award was founded by Michael Macaluso, Ph.D., and the award committee includes literacy experts from the Center for Literacy Education, the Global Center for the Development of the While Child, as well as a renowned expert on theology, spirituality, and pastoral life. The award is given to a middle grade or young adult novel that advances Gospel values through the positive actions and portrayals of tenacious adolescents.

The goal of our recommendations for math tutors is to help students achieve their full potential as mathematicians. Our tutors promote conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and mathematics self-efficacy. We focus on big ideas that are central to the learning of mathematics, so students can move beyond seeing math as a set of disconnected procedures and facts to appreciating math as a coherent set of ideas and tools. Many of our tutors working with early elementary students use ICUE, an evidence-based program developed right here at Notre Dame by the CLAD Lab team. Other tutors working with elementary and middle school students use a variety of our recommended resources and instructional strategies based on the IES What Works Practice Guides for math instruction, including Khan Academy, Illustrative Math, ASSISTments, Eureka Math, Bedtime Math, Sunshine Math, Pirate Math Equation Quest by Sarah Powell and her colleagues, Number Talks, Open Middle Problems, Saga Education, and Art of Problem Solving resources-- recommended programming depends on students' interests and learning goals. Tutors learn to help all students develop fluency with arithmetic in ways that lead to fast and accurate retrieval of facts while also improving understanding of the underlying concepts. Tutors with students seeking advanced enrichment work on puzzles and multi-step challenge problems that require creativity and persistence to help develop their mathematical reasoning and higher-order problem-solving skills.