Welcome to Mrs. Banker’s Butterflies
We offer a balanced literacy tutoring program where your child can learn best spelling, writing, and reading practices from the comfort of your home!
Tutoring Program Areas
Phonetic Awareness
The ability to isolate, manipulate, blend, and segment the sounds that make up spoken language.
Spelling
The recognition that words are made up of separate speech sounds (phonemes) and that letters represent those sounds. As children become familiar with words, they’ll begin to notice patterns among letters, recurring sequences of letters that form syllables, word endings, word roots, prefixes, and suffixes.
Phonics
The understanding of relationships between letters and sounds.
Writing
The ability to use phonemic awareness to stretch out sounds to write words, make connections between letters and sounds, and use conventions such as capital letters, lowercase letters, spacing, and punctuation in sentences.
Sight Word Recognition
The ability to memorize words that are non-phonetic — words that cannot be sounded out. Sight words are learned in a multi-sensory way for storage in long-term memory.
Fluency
The ability to read with accuracy, speed, and expression.
Testimonials
“It is always a pleasure to work with Ilene Banker. She has a wealth of instructional experience in reading and language arts, including extensive training in specialized reading programs. From a teacher, then administrator, and now as the PALs Tutor in my school, I have seen her consistent, positive connection to the students. She understands their current levels and moves them forward gently, so that students can more easily find their comfort zone in reading. She not only helps students learn to read, she inspires them to love reading. They look forward to working with her and come away smiling when they decode a difficult word or read fluidly through a phrase. Always a win-win for us and the children.”
— Lisa, Administrator
"Mrs. Banker was amazing to work with each day. She helped my Kindergarten students gain knowledge and confidence in the early foundational skills. My Kindergarten students were always thrilled when they were able to work with Mrs. Banker. Her enthusiasm and love of teaching showed in the activities she provided to the students."
— Teresa, Teacher
“Under Ilene’s tutelage, our young readers made growth in all areas of early literacy. They loved working with Mrs. Banker and were proud to show their teacher and peers their new skills. Few students remained below benchmark after working with Ilene. We were very fortunate to have had such a highly qualified, passionate PALS tutor for so many years.”
— Wendy, Reading Specialist