literacy teaching vulnerable learners and those on community orders or probation 1

Literacy

Teaching vulnerable learners and those on community orders or probation

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Aims

Aim

• To consider effective strategies for teaching literacy to vulnerable learners and/or those on community orders/probation

Objectives

By the end of the session you will be able to:

• identify some strategies used by effective literacy teachers

• select activities appropriate for adult literacy learners who are vulnerable and/or those on community orders/probation

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Activity 1: Who are your learners?

Take five minutes to discuss and record what you know about your learners. Think about:

• What has been their previous experience of education?

• What skills / attitudes do they come with?

• What literacy skills do they need to or might want to develop?

• What do you know about how they like to learn?

• What might be the main barriers to learning they face?

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Who are your learners?

Your learners will have:• Ideas, experiences, and knowledge of language,

written materials, and the world• Prior experience of literacy, and of reading and writing,

even if they do not acknowledge this• Potentially, bad experience of education in the past

Important to take these aspects of learners’ experience into account

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Adult Literacy Learners

• There is an evidence base of teaching practices with proven effectiveness for adult literacy learners, developed by a critical review of the available research

• Can you predict what might be in it?

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Enhancing literacy teaching for adults: the evidence base

Benseman, Sutton & Lander, 2005:•Explicit teaching by well-trained teachers in phonics, fluency, vocabulary building and comprehension•Ongoing assessment in reading and writing•Teaching directed by assessment•‘Authentic’ reading, writing and oral activities that relate to learners’ lives and experience •A variety of reading, writing and oral activities •Sufficient number of hours of tuition, possibly more than 100 hours

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Explicit teaching by well-trained teachers: Core dimensions of reading

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Core dimensions of writing

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Core dimensions of speaking and listening

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Activity 3

Which methods work best for literacy teaching?

Take into account :• what you know about your learners• the evidence base of effective teaching practices• the core dimensions of literacy that learners need

Refer to the Literacy Activities – Activity 3, and complete the exercise.

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Activity 4: Andragogy – how adults learn

Malcolm Knowles' theory of Andragogy (1980s) has six assumptions:

1. Need to Know: adults need to know the reason for learning something

2. Experience: experience (including error) provides the basis for learning activities

3. Self-concept: adults need to be responsible for decisions on their education

4. Relevance: adults are most interested in learning subjects which are relevant to their work and/or personal lives

5. Motivation: adults respond better to internal rather than external motivators

6. Orientation: adult learning is problem-centred rather than content-oriented

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How might this translate into literacy teaching?

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Proficiency and developmental tasks

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Examples of different types of tasks

Proficiency tasks Developmental tasks

Complete a close exercise (gap fill) on a text to show understanding

Write a summary of a text to show understanding

Listen and respond to closed questions

Listen and respond to open questions

Read and follow a set of instructions

Read and respond to a short story

Write a personal statement by filling in a writing frame

Write a personal statement

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Participatory learning

• Any teaching method can be participatory if the learner is involved in choosing it

• Try choosing methods that involve learners making their own decisions and relying on each other rather than the teacher

• Collaborative tasks build independence and empower learners

• Beginning readers? Try Language Experience approach

• More experienced readers? Try Reciprocal Reading• Writers (any level)? –Try Writing at the House

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Language Experience Approach

• Two learners work together. Learner A is the catalyst; learner B is the writer

• A has a discussion with B and writes down a small portion of what s/he says.

• It is important to use B’s exact works (not to translate into Standard English)

• A writes it out clearly for B, who reads it back.• When B can read it as a sentence (or two) A cuts it

into chunks and then words for B to pick out individual sections or words and rearrange.

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Writing at the House 1

• Autobiographical, reflective writing• Provides authentic writing task• Focuses on process not product of writing • Learners read relevant autobiographies as models and

discuss themes• Brainstorm ideas and write (multiple) drafts• Consider audience, purpose and genre• Present work and get feedback from peers and tutors

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Writing at the House 2• The autobiographical nature of the writing ensures relevance to the

learner and offers the teacher insights into the learner’s world.• Their learning is supported by the reading of relevant and engaging

texts. • The techniques and strategies they learn in the workshop are

integrated into every other course. – In the job skills class they use active voice, descriptive

language, grammatical rules, etc in CVs and cover letters. – They apply the word processing skills learnt in the IT class in

their writing in the workshop. – In the life skills class they record the minutes of each session,

writing clearly, accurately and succinctly.

See Resources slide at the end.

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• Also collaborative technique for developing comprehension from research by Anne-Marie Palincsar (1984, 1985)

• Divides comprehension of text into 4 explicit stages

Why use it?• It makes explicit the different elements of comprehension• It divides these elements of comprehension between several

people, making the task less onerous for each• It supports the process of comprehension• It allows all learners to contribute and learn from each other

Reciprocal reading (1)

predict clarify question summarise

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• Predict– What do you think will happen in the next section?

• Clarify– Was there anything you didn’t understand?– How can we work out what it means?

• Question– Think of a question you can ask the rest of the group

about what you have read

• Summarise– What happened in the section we just read?

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Activity 6: Reciprocal reading

Refer to the Activity Sheet and complete the exercise.

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In summary, when teaching literacy, think about ...

• The learners and what they bring• What effective literacy teachers do: teach explicit

literacy skills; inform teaching with on-going assessment; use a variety of literacy tasks which are authentic and related to learners’ experiences

• How adults learn and how this impacts on their learning of literacy (andragogy)

• How different types of teaching methods and learning activities can motivate and support learners

• How to promote participatory learning activities

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Further resources

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• On the resource list you will find more references and resources, many of which can be downloaded, that you might want to look at. There are some general literacy resources, and some that are specific to the participatory methods we have been discussing today.

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Materials in this CPD were devised by the following members of the Institute of Education: Brian Creese (numeracy), Jay Derrick (assessment and embedding), Jane Hurry (motivation and exit strategies), Maria Kambouri (ICT), Irene Schwab (literacy) and John Vorhaus (continuing professional development and learner contexts)

Helpful suggestions and comments were made by Joe Shamash and Olivia Varley-Winter at City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development.

If you would like to contact us please email Jane Hurry at [email protected]

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mailto:[email protected]

The CPD FrameworkAn outline of the sessions

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literacy teaching vulnerable learners and those on community orders or probation 1

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