Boulder • tutoring • teens • children • reading • test preparation • literacy skills • adult education • tutors • homeschool parents • learning disabilities

About Active Learning Services

Active Learning Services, located in Boulder, Colorado, was established in 1973 by Sylvia Keepers, a skilled teacher whose many students have gone on to successful academic and business careers.  For over thirty years she has helped young people and adults develop a love of learning as they master the disciplines of reading and writing.

In the quiet, positive learning environment of Active Learning, Sylvia's mentoring approach encourages personal growth as students acquire the literacy skills they need.  She also shares her experience and skills with other tutors, teachers, and homeschool parents.  In addition, Active Learning Services provides important adult education programs for adult learners and career education opportunities for teachers.

At Active Learning Services: 

• parents can find tutoring for their child in study skills, reading, writing, and test preparation

• adults can receive academic and organizational coaching
• homeschool parents can expand and hone their own homeschooling skills and acquire new tools for educating their children

• teachers can learn the art and business of tutoring from a master teacher

Teaching through interconnected step-wise
activities and exercises

Sylvia Keepers is a veteran teacher with a wealth of experience, enthusiasm and skill to bring to her job, whether it is teaching a young child to read, helping a teenager get organized, or mentoring another tutor.

During her teaching career, Sylvia has developed a series of interconnected, step-wise learning activities to teach all phases of the reading and writing process.  Hundreds of students have benefited from these exercises, which cover everything from learning the alphabet to understanding literary symbolism. 

Publications and Course Development

These activities are the basis of Sylvia's own tutoring and the curriculum of her "how to tutor" course for prospective tutors.  They also are at the heart of her book, SMART!  A Reading Tutor's Guide. Please visit the author's website, SMART! A Reading Tutor's Guide for additional information, including author presentations, tutoring services, book excerpts, and purchase details.

Highly regarded by educators, SMART! (ISBN 978-0-9885320-1-4; 477 pp; $29.95) is available online at Keystone Court Press and SMART! A Reading Tutor's Guide, as well as at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

Qualifications and experience

• Degree in education, 1961, University of Denver

• Tutor: private, individual language arts instruction, including curriculum planning and educational counseling since 1973

• English as a Second Language instructor, Littleton Public Schools

• Boulder resident since 1987. Experience working with students and teachers from all the public schools and many independent schools

• Instructor and coordinator for homeschool families

• Mentor and trainer for elementary and secondary language arts tutors

• Speed reading instructor, University of Colorado Continuing Education

“You have saved a child’s life.”

—Mother of a seventeen-year-old son in the
Active Learning homeschool program

This fourth-grader raised his reading skills
three grade levels in a year.

“You have not only helped our son, you have helped our entire family.”

—Parents of a 14-year-old who suffered a head trauma, and had to completely re-learn to read

SMART! A Reading Tutor’s Guide is a complete handbook for adults who want to help teens excel at reading and learning. SMART! is also an indispensable aid in setting up a tutoring practice. It covers all aspects of one-to-one reading instruction from word recognition through in-depth understanding at the advanced high school level. With this guide, any educated person, even one who has never taught before, can help teens read well, love reading, and become motivated, independent learners.

“SOLID GOLD”

This book is solid gold for reading tutors and teachers. Finally we have a text that spells out exactly what to do to meet the needs of our struggling readers. We’ve all had students we desperately wanted to help and had to rely on intuition and best guesses. No more. SMART! A Reading Tutor’s Guide provides a road map full of practical activities for reading assessment and instruction. Insightfully mixing practice, theory, and anecdote, this book is incredibly helpful for anyone charged with improving student reading. This will be our next book study with our secondary reading interventionists.

—Ramona Lowe, Ph.D.
Secondary Literacy Design Coach

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