Margie Thompson
Learning Specialist & Academic Tutor
Empowering children to reach their
true academic potential!
​Learn more today! Call 407-408-3132!
Email: margie.thompson@live.com
Other Services Offered In Central Florida From Margie Thompson
Personalized Learning...Independent Learners...Successful Students
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Executive Functioning Skills
Even bright children can struggle with planning, organization, time management, problem solving, self-monitoring, and critical thinking if deficits exist. These skills, collectively known as executive function, serve as the foundation for all higher level cognitive and academic tasks.
Think of executive function as the CEO of the brain. How can students become the CEO of their brains when teachers and technology do most of the work? We often do not allow students to think for themselves.
Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment Program (FIE) uses a series of content-free, paper and pencil activities (known as instruments) designed to allow students to focus on the thinking process and to develop their own strategies to acquire a new skill. The teacher no longer spoon feeds information, instead mediates (questioning) and allows the student to discover how to gather information, strategize, problem solve, and offer a solution. This allows the student to learn the skill of how to learn/think versus what to learn. It is at this point that a student can learn more, think more, and be more successful both in and out of the classroom.
Homeschool Support
If you are a parent who has chosen to homeschool, you may be looking for additional assistance. Margie Thompson offers teacher consultation, curriculum planning, and implementation services. Experienced in offering and preparing research-based curricula for students of all ages, Margie can teach all required subjects or simply teach a subject you may not feel adequately equipped to administer.
Margie specializes in teaching reading and math, yet she can assist in preparing creative lesson plans that are hands-on and make learning come alive for any subject. Instruction is individualized for your child’s unique learning needs and style. Get the support you and your child need to make homeschooling a success!
Enrichment Tutoring
Tutoring centers are opening up on every corner. Parents are trying to give their children the opportunity to learn and grow to their full academic potential. Tutoring is no longer just for struggling students. The ultimate goal is to give children an academic advantage.
In today’s world, students have to find a way to stand out, get better grades, a better education, and in return, get into a better college. Enrichment tutoring helps students successfully navigate today’s challenging K-12 education. Through careful guidance, students are taught to embrace the learning process and use it to pursue their dreams.
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Writing Services
Is your child finding it difficult to express his or her thoughts in written form? Is your child unable to organize ideas? Is your child struggling with spelling, punctuation, or grammar? If the answer is yes to any of the above questions, Margie Thompson offers research-based, multi-sensory instruction to enhance and cultivate effective writing skills.
Good writing skills require a child to juggle a lot of skills. A student must simultaneously generate ideas, plan and organize the material, be creative as well as analytical, and follow the rules of spelling and grammar. To compound things even further, in today’s classroom, children are required to write complete sentences, comprehensive paragraphs, interesting narratives, and detailed multi-paragraph essays as early as first grade.
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With explicit strategy instruction, Margie helps a student to break down the writing process into manageable chunks. Students learn to master the techniques of various types of writing such as paragraph and essay development in different genres. The goal is to help students become comfortable with the writing process, while developing their own personal writing style. Help your child become the author or his or her own success story!
Frequently Asked Questions About Other Services Offered by Margie Thompson
Q: How can a writing tutor improve my child’s writing skills?
A: When working with a writing tutor, your child will be practicing several different aspects of writing, thus improving their overall skills. These aspects include:
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Grammar – This is made up of much more than just proofreading skills; it combines word types, punctuation, sentence structuring and much more. By improving your child’s grammar, their vocabulary will also become more developed.
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Developing Paragraphs – This is vital to increasing your child’s writing skills and focuses on writing intro paragraphs, high-quality main ideas, adding details to support those main ideas, using unique yet accurate word choices, using complete sentences, and creating conclusion type paragraphs.
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Using and Improving Big Picture Skills – Voice, character and plot development, and more are skills that are helpful when brainstorming and creating cohesive pieces of writing.
Again, each child and their needs are unique, and when working with a learning specialist and writing tutor like Margie Thompson, she learns your child’s individual skill set and determines what areas are in need of improvement, what skills should be honed on, and how to approach their curriculum going forward.
Q: As a parent, what can I do to improve my child’s writing skills?
A: When your child is home, there are many things you, as a parent, can do to improve their writing skills further. Here are some popular ways to help your child progress:
Introducing organizers to help them visualize and outline their ideas – These organizers can help your child foster their creativity and utilize that into their writing. This is beneficial especially if your child has focus or attention problems, as well if their reading is below their grade level.
Reading to your child, then having them retell the story – The next time you are reading with your child, have them retell you the story and record them retelling it to you. Sit with your child and have them listen to the recording with you and discuss certain aspects of the story with them. For example, discussing the characters, main ideas, settings/plots, and any introductory or conclusions. This will help your child further understand the structure of writing and storytelling.
Q: What are the benefits of hiring a learning specialist versus a tutor to help with homeschooling my child?
A: There are several benefits of hiring a learning specialist versus a tutor when homeschooling your child. Some of these benefits include:
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Increased subject expertise
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Flexibility for the family
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Creating personalized lesson plans
