Tullis Tutoring

This week was all about being FLEXIBLE with our numbers! Here are two ways you can teach mental math addition strategies.

Start with concrete items, then number bonds or diagrams, and then after plenty of practice, they will be able to do these problems in their head! (yes, as early as 1st grade!):

1. Make a Ten (or make the next ten)
2. Add 10s and 1s

We highly recommend Struggly! ⭐️ Founded by Stanford math education researchers, this program breaks out of the narrow math standards typically followed in schools.

Struggly is designed to help students lean into the struggle— and they love it!! It deepens students’ understanding of math concepts by creating new connections in the brain through fun visual tasks.

We will be using Struggly with our students to extend their math learning outside of school & tutoring sessions! 💥

Explore their IG here:

We are celebrating 55 hours of summer learning in 2025! Happy back to school season to our amazing students and families! Swipe to see some fun conversions of what 55 hours really looks like… ✖️

May wrapped up her summer research project this week! May developed her own survey about travel experiences and spent time on vacation talking to her friends and family to gather data. She analyzed her data by calculating the mean, median, mode, and range for her responses, but more importantly, worked to understand why those numbers matter. She is TOTALLY prepared for fifth grade!! Way to go May!! 📊➗📝

Why are early math and literacy skills so important? Swipe to learn why these skills matter and how early intervention can change a student's whole trajectory! 📖📒✏️

Can you guess this week’s literacy theme? 🐮🤠

We had so much fun reading cow-themed stories and making text-to-self connections together- a key strategy that helps readers better understand and enjoy what they read.

Since we both have real-life cow friends, the stories felt extra special! 🐄

Connecting books to personal experiences builds confidence, comprehension, and a love for reading.

Here's Sophie crushing a quick & fun bilateral coordination exercise where she uses both hands to mirror shapes and patterns at the same time.

Bilateral coordination is the ability to us both sides of the body together in a controlled and organized way—either symmetrically (doing the same thing on both sides) or asymmetrically (each side doing something different in sync, like pedaling a bike).

In ✍️ handwriting ✍️ , this shows up when:
• One hand writes while the other stabilizes the paper
• The eyes track across a page (requiring coordinated brain hemisphere communication)
• Fine motor skills are integrated with visual input and body posture

This coordination relies on strong communication between the left 🧠 and right 🧠 hemispheres of the brain—primarily through the corpus callosum. Strengthening this communication improves:
• Visual-motor integration
• Motor planning
• Attention and working memory
• Spatial awareness

Bilateral coordination is foundational for executive function, self-regulation, and academic success—especially in early childhood and elementary years.

Source: American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA)

Great work Sophie!! 🤩

This data talk sparked quite the conversation! Swipe to see the AKC dog data in more detail. 🐾

Inspired by Jo Boaler’s research at Stanford (big shoutout to Youcubed), we know that talking about data builds number sense and flexible thinking way before algorithms even come into play.

When students learn to analyze real information and discuss what they see, they’re learning to:
- make sense of patterns
- share observations
- think critically
- & ask meaningful questions

Source: Retrieved from .stanford via informationisbeautiful.net 🐕‍🦺🦮🐩🐕

Big shoutout to Jen Hunt from , one of my math heroes, for introducing me to the amazing world of math education. 🔢

Here's photo of Audrey using fraction tiles to help us visualize fractions in different ways with the Four Corners tool (created by Jen, adapted with permission by Laura Nelson from MathwaysNW).

Swipe to read why concrete manipulatives are so important in the learning process! This is true for young learners AND older learners, too!

Thank you Jen & Laura for sharing and promoting effective math education tools 🥳👏

Source: New Math Minds & MathwaysNW

"Do you know how to spell Diatomaceous Earth?" is one of the funniest spelling questions I've heard yet!

This week our theme was chickens! 🐓 We learned how to use an encyclopedia, read a table with a key, and practiced writing a list of all the supplies needed to take care of chickens.

We even looked up the local feed store's chicken schedule from this past spring and identified characteristics of the different breeds like broodiness, rate of egg laying, place of origin, and if they are cold-hardy and/or sun tolerant. My student HAD to check out this book to learn more! Perks of working at the library 😉 🐓

Inspired by the popular game show Chain Reaction…but make it reading practice! Here are two examples of Word Chains & Word Ladders! 🪜

These simple word games build literacy skills such as:
🔤 phonemic awareness
🧠 flexible thinking
🧩 spelling patterns
💬 vocab building
👏 reading confidence

These games can be tailored for all learners even though the overarching goal is always the same: make learning feel like a fun puzzle, not a chore. 🙂

Source: Daily Word Ladders by Timothy Rasinski & the amazing University of Florida's Literacy Institute (UFLI)!

Here’s a super fun ‘quick write’ we did last week! Which blob do you feel like today and why? 📝🧠📒