FREE homework help for kindergarten through eighth-grade students at Cincinnati Public Library branches.
Cincinnati Public Library hosts FREE homework help for students in kindergarten through eighth grades at select branch libraries in the afternoons during the school year. Homework Helpers at these locations assist students with school assignments and provide skills-building assistance on any subject. Additionally, homework help and skill-building are available seven days a week online at Cincy Library Brainfuse.
With many Hamilton County children returning to in-person learning and coming to the Library, Homework Help is currently available for walk-in services from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays at the Avondale, College Hill, Pleasant Ridge branches and 2 p.m. – 5 p.m. at the Westwood branch.
As vaccines continue to roll out, we hope to return to total capacity, offering Homework Help at more than 25 branch locations. For more information, contact the branch at 513-369-6900 or visit Homework Assistance. Please call to confirm schedules and availability before arrival.
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Learning and Growing Together
Students can drop in and get what they need individually or in small groups. The best part? They really love it.
At our Avondale Branch, helpers meet the kids where they are and build a trusting relationship through games and doing crafts while helping with specific needs like algebra or reading.
At the Westwood Branch, the students who drop in have been increasing in numbers, so the Helper has moved operations into the branch’s meeting room. This allows the students space for work and two helpers to make one-on-one appointments with kids or their families.
The Pleasant Ridge Branch‘s building is set up differently. Two helpers make one-on-one appointments with kids or their families to meet the Library’s stringent safety protocols. Help has typically been given in math and reading, but because of the pandemic, helpers have expanded how they assist students. They even are seeing more older students, helping with advanced math, physics, chemistry, and even Latin while also being able to focus on helping higher–need students with reading.
One ESOL student who visited the Pleasant Ridge Branch mentioned that he loved dinosaurs, so the helper he works with uses a dinosaur puzzle as motivation. As he reaches his reading goals, they assemble the puzzle while labeling the dinos.
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Live Tutoring Available Online
For kids who are still remote-learning or may have circumstances that prevent them from physically coming to a branch for help, the Library provides free access to BrainFuse Help Now, an online program for students and parents alike that provides live virtual tutoring, writing labs, study guides, test prep, SkillSurfer lessons and quizzes, and even chess tutoring, and help for students or caregivers navigating filing the FAFSA.
How You Can Support Homework Help
Our Homework Help program wouldn’t be possible without our generous donor, The Charles H. Dater Foundation, through The Library Foundation. For many of us, libraries were among the first places where we connected to ideas more significant than ourselves. We heard stories, researched subjects, discovered new material, and let our imagination take us to places beyond our surroundings.
Whether we knew it or not, libraries lit the fire and fed the burning drive to do, see, and be something more.
The Library Foundation is dedicated to ensuring a great library system by raising, managing, and allocating funds to expand and enhance the Library’s programs. Your donations allow the Library Foundation to fund system-wide and branch-specific initiatives and programming for minds of all kinds. You can support the Library Foundation by visiting foundation.cincinnatilibrary.org.
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Written by: Crystal Kendrick
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