Carmel Finnegan

Carsten started literacy tutoring with Mrs Finnegan a year ago. He was unable to sound out letters of words and unable to blend the syllables to make the unidentified word in order to read; in fact he couldn’t read at all for his age level. He really lacked in so many areas such as reading comprehension, spelling, syllables and working out ways to decode in order to read words correctly. He struggled to do the homework because the homework was too hard due to his lack of English skills in order to complete the homework.

Fast forward to one year, and Carsten is much more fluent and confident when reading, decoding words and breaking down the syllables to read unidentified words correctly. He can now do his homework tasks that Mrs Finnegan gives him- he enjoys doing it now, because he has the skills he was lacking. Whereas before he dreaded homework as he wasn’t sure how to complete the tasks with his limited English skills.

He started tutoring with Mrs Finnegan way below his age level for language and literacy (English). He’s almost at his age level after explicitly working with Mrs Finnegan to help him fill these learning area gaps over the past 16 months. Mrs Finnegan organised specific lessons for Carsten to work on, and gave us resources each week to work on each concept Carsten was lacking in. For example, Carsten had trouble saying words that ended in ‘ed’ such as ‘stopped’, he would say ‘’stopped’ instead of ‘stopped’. Mrs Finnegan designed words on flashcards to teach this concept so Carsten could gain the skills outside of his tutoring hours.

Mrs Finnegan puts in many hours outside of her tutoring lessons for Carsten. She goes above and beyond when she prepares her lessons for Carsten, to ensure she’s teaching him the right skills he needed to help him succeed in reading words correctly. Mrs Finnegan designed an air hockey game with flashcards on them with the words Carsten didn’t know. This is one way Mrs Finnegan engaged hands-on learning experiences for Carsten to help him learn the skills in an interactive learning environment.

Carsten is in Year 3 this year, he was getting D’s in English from Prep to Year 2. He’s now getting C+ for English. We still need to work on his English skills to fill his current gaps, but I truly believe Carsten has made progress because of Mrs Finnegan’s explicit teaching lessons, that have been especially tailored just for Carsten.

I would highly recommend Mrs Finnegan to any parent who has a child who is lacking skills in English. Mrs Finnegan isn’t just a highly experienced English tutor and teacher, she has become apart of Carsten’s life; they have formed a very strong partnership in order for Carsten to enjoy doing tutoring lessons with her. Carsten enjoys his weekly lessons and thinks very fondly of all the hard work Mrs Finnegan puts into her lessons to support Carsten to succeed. We are very grateful for everything Mrs Finnegan has done in order for Carsten to progress forward with his English skills. We couldn’t recommend her enough.
Robert and Anita Accendere

Mrs Finnegan has given my son the confidence he needs to improve his literacy and language skills, using her ‘Cracking the ABC Code Program’. Her lessons are very well organised, and are targeted at the child’s learning needs to help them improve their literacy and language skills, which they are lacking. I couldn’t highly recommend Mrs Finnegan enough, she is an amazing teacher.

Carmel has done an amazing job with my daughter. She was patient and welcoming and made my daughter feel at ease. Carmel did a wonderful job at explaining content in a way that my daughter could understand and we had huge improvements with my daughter’s abilities. We cannot recommend her enough.

I can't recommend Carmel enough. She has been absolutely fantastic with my daughter who was very reluctant to participate in the program at the start. However through Carmel's patience and persistence my daughter eventually began to look forward to her sessions. She made huge improvements in all areas and a 2 year improvement in reading accuracy. She no longer adds in words which was a real issue for her. Carmel is also very good at recognising when my daughter needed a break and then getting back on to task without an issues.
Thank you Carmel your a God send.

I conducted many classroom walkthroughs in Carmel's classrooms and found her to be thorough and inclusive. She differentiated the curriculum appropriately with great detail. Carmel was also our Therapy Dog Handler and went above and beyond in this role to work with students experiencing difficulties accessing the curriculum, those with school refusal and those who had anxiety.