With Buffalo's average student-teacher ratio of 10.2:1, many students benefit from the individualized attention that personalized tutoring provides. Varsity Tutors connects Buffalo students with tutors trained in the Susan Barton method, who can work at each student's pace to address specific reading challenges—whether that's decoding struggles, comprehension gaps, or building fluency—in a way classroom instruction alone may not allow.

Susan Barton tutoring is designed to help students who struggle with phonemic awareness, phonics, word recognition, fluency, and comprehension. Many students also benefit from this approach if they have dyslexia, difficulty sounding out unfamiliar words, or gaps in foundational skills that impact their overall reading performance. Personalized instruction allows tutors to identify exactly where a student's skills need strengthening and target that area directly.

In the first session, a tutor will assess your student's current reading level, identify specific strengths and areas for improvement, and discuss learning goals with you. This helps establish a personalized plan tailored to your student's needs, ensuring the tutoring focuses on the skills that will have the biggest impact on their reading success.

The Susan Barton method provides explicit, step-by-step instruction in a highly structured sequence, whereas classroom reading often moves at a pace that doesn't work for all learners. With personalized 1-on-1 instruction, tutors can slow down, repeat concepts, and adjust the approach based on how your student learns best—giving struggling readers the repetition and reinforcement they need to build strong foundational skills.

Susan Barton tutoring is effective for students from elementary through high school, though it's often most impactful when started in elementary grades when foundational reading skills are being established. That said, older students who missed foundational skills or continue to struggle with reading can absolutely benefit from this systematic approach—it's never too late to build stronger reading abilities.

Tutors track progress through regular assessments of phonics skills, fluency rates, comprehension, and decoding accuracy. You'll see measurable improvements in areas like reading speed, accuracy on grade-level texts, ability to sound out unfamiliar words, and confidence during reading. Many parents notice changes within weeks—students become more willing to read, tackle harder books, and perform better on classroom reading assessments.

Varsity Tutors connects Buffalo students with tutors trained in the Susan Barton reading system. When you reach out, we'll match your student with a tutor whose expertise and teaching style fit your needs, and you can start personalized instruction right away. The process is straightforward—we handle the matching so you can focus on your student's reading growth.