Reading tutoring: a guide for pros
What customers ask, how to win the job, and what to put on your profile.
Offering reading tutoring
You tutor students in reading, from phonics and decoding through fluency and comprehension. Your sessions work best when you check each reading skill first, then build practice that the student can carry into their own reading.
What customers ask
- Can you help my child catch up?
- Do you teach phonics?
- How long until my child reads faster?
- Do you help with comprehension?
- What books do we use?
- Do you work with older students?
How to win the job
- On the first call, ask the student's age, grade and reading level, and any assessment the school has done, then say what you will check first
- Assess decoding, fluency and comprehension in the first session and share the result with the parent
- Teach the sound and letter pattern for each session, and have the student read words in a sentence right away
- Put the number of sessions, length, format, materials and cancellation terms in the quote
- Guide reading aloud with a short passage, and check for meaning with one question after each page
- Send a short written note after each session with the skill covered and one thing to read at home
What to put on your profile
- Your teaching background, including degrees and any reading training you have
- The reading levels you teach, from early readers to older students
- Whether you tutor in person, online or both
- Results you can share with permission, such as the skills a student built
- A background check listed on your profile, which parents can see when you work with children
Follow-up that helps the customer
- A home reading plan with the book, the minutes and one skill to practice
- A comprehension session for students who read the words but do not get the meaning
- A check-in with the parent after a few weeks to review progress
- A summer reading session to keep skills steady before the next school year
Licenses and permits
No license is usually required to tutor reading privately. Keep your teaching or reading training on your profile, complete a background check if you work with children, and check with your state or local licensing agency for any rules that apply if you tutor through a school or program.
Questions
Do I need a background check to tutor children?
Many parents ask for one, and many tutoring companies and schools require one before you work with minors. Keep a copy on your profile when you have it.
How do I handle a child who guesses words from the picture?
Cover the picture and have the child sound out the first sound and the next letter pattern. Praise the decoding, and show the child how the sound leads to the word.
What happens when a request does not fit my schedule?
On infinibell you can decline a request for free. You pay only for the leads you accept.
Pro reviewers
Pros who offer reading tutoring remotely can improve this guide, like Wikipedia. We check every edit before it goes live. Every approved edit is credited in the edit history and on the pro's profile.
Edit history
- Oct 29, 2026: Drafted by infinibell to our content guidelines.
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