The purpose of this case study was to examine the effects of a code-based reading tutorial in English for eight beginning at-risk readers who were English learners (ELs) and for their preservice teacher-tutors. Eight undergraduate preservice special education teachers tutored the ELs twice weekly for a total of 15 hr to fulfill a required service learning project. Tutoring was provided at the children's high-poverty elementary school. On average, ELs' raw scores grew significantly in terms of word attack, passage comprehension, and sound identification. Furthermore, ELs gained an average of .18 standard score points per hour of tutoring on word attack, .38 on word identification, and .30 on passage comprehension. Tutors improved from 57.50% to 99.38% on a reliable test of teacher knowledge of language structure. Practical applications to promote research-based practices and limitations are discussed.
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