Writing tutoring in Anchorage, Alaska
Kolu is software. Nobody from Kolu will drive to your house in Anchorage, and we have no office there. If you want a person, this page says how we would look for one. If the question is which skill is missing, we can help with that part.
Public schools in Anchorage are run by Anchorage School District. Alaska tests reading and writing together, as English language arts, with AK STAR in grades 3 through 9.
Writing more does not fix writing
Students who write badly are usually told to write more. It doesn't help, for the same reason that playing more matches doesn't fix a tennis serve. An essay is a stack of smaller skills. There is the sentence that says one thing, the paragraph that makes a claim and backs it up, and an order a reader can follow. A student missing one of those hands in the same weak essay every time and gets the same comment in the margin.
State writing tasks reward the plain version of this. Read two sources, take a position, support it from the sources. A common way to lose points is to write a decent essay that never uses the texts provided.
The problem on the page
An argument essay drawing on two sources
Ordering an argument across paragraphs
Grade 6 and up
A paragraph with a claim and evidence
Grades 4 and 5 · rests on the one below
Combining and varying sentences
Grades 3 and 4 · usually where it started
Complete sentences
Grades 1 and 2
What Alaska tests, by grade
| Grade | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reading and writing | AK STAR | AK STAR | AK STAR | AK STAR | AK STAR | AK STAR | AK STAR | Not tested | Not tested | Not tested |
| Math | AK STAR | AK STAR | AK STAR | AK STAR | AK STAR | AK STAR | AK STAR | Not tested | Not tested | Not tested |
| Science | Not tested | Not tested | Alaska Science Assessment | Not tested | Not tested | Alaska Science Assessment | Not tested | Alaska Science Assessment | Not tested | Not tested |
- AK STAR (Alaska System of Academic Readiness): reading and writing, math, grades 3 through 9
- Alaska Science Assessment: science, grades 5, 8 and 10
Testing dates, graduation rules and the one deadline families miss are on a separate page. Anchorage guide
Kolu finds the missing skill and goes back to it
Kolu practices the parts. It asks for a sentence, a claim, a paragraph that uses a given source, and it reads what the student wrote to see whether it does the job. When Kolu isn't confident in its own reading of an answer, that answer doesn't count for or against the student. It is not an essay editor, and it won't mark up a five-page draft the way a teacher does.
Kolu does not call a skill mastered after one right answer. That takes correct work on different kinds of problems on different days, and a skill that fades gets brought back.
Kolu is not test prep for AK STAR. It has no bank of released questions. It teaches the skills the test draws on, and it will not do tonight's homework.
When to hire a person instead
For a college application essay, or a student who needs a draft read closely every week, hire a person. Feedback on a whole piece of writing from someone who has read the student's last three is something we don't offer.
In Anchorage, ask the school first. Teachers know who tutors, and a counselor at Anchorage School District can tell you what the district already offers at no cost. After that, try students at University of Alaska Anchorage or Alaska Pacific University, who took these courses recently and usually charge less than an agency.
Whoever you hire, ask one question before the first session: how will you find out what my child doesn't know? If the answer is that they will go over the homework, keep looking.
Free for one subject, $15 a month for 5
Kolu is free for one subject at a time, with one full skill check every 30 days and up to 4 sessions a day. Plus is $15 a month, or $120 for a year, and covers 5 subjects at once with unlimited skill checks. A learner under 13 needs a parent or guardian to set up the account.