Research-based best practices
- Teach reading for authentic, meaning-making literacy
experiences: for pleasure, to be informed, and to perform a task.
- Use high-quality literature.
- Integrate a comprehensive word study/phonics program into
reading/writing instruction.
- Use multiple texts that link and expand concepts.
- Balance teacher-and student-led discussions.
- Build a whole-class community that emphasizes important concepts
and builds background knowledge.
- Work with students in small groups while other students read and
write about what they have read.
- Give students plenty of time to read in class.
- Give students direct instruction in decoding and comprehension
strategies that promote independent reading. Balance directinstruction, guided instruction, and independent learning.
- Use a variety of assessment techniques to inform instruction.
(Adapted from Best Practices in Literacy
Instruction
, edited by Lesley Morrow, Linda Gambrell and Micael
Pressley.)
Adult literacy programs
The greatest literacy programs engage local leaders
in "each-one-teach-one" settings and a wide network of "literacy circles"or "literacy committees." These "literacy circles and committees" adopt
program structures that rely on a particular technique towards literacyand depend on rotating leadership, mandatory attendance, and assessment.
These structures rely on the mobilization of
individuals, groups, agencies, religious bodies, and non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs) to participate actively in mass literacy as
volunteer teachers, learners, sponsors, or organizers.
It is wise to train graduate students, who are teacher interns, to be
literacy educators. The benefits are several, but the most importantreason is that you enlist a cadre of young teachers who value the community as
a vital resource and who have spent a considerable amount of time amongst thepeople. They learn about families, social and economic pressures, and theimpediments to and incentives for education.
Each-One-Teach-One Program Elements
There are four general principles governing adult
literacy:
- Picture-word synthesis utilizes the teaching concept that starts
with what adults know and adds an association with the unknown - the"code" they can break by progressing from pictures to words.
- "Syllabic analysis of words" breaks down the word into syllables in
order to increase the ability for adults.
- The use of primers with pictures and graded material in order of
difficulty. Such primers MUST have identified the local, practicalproblems that adults face, for which literacy (and numeracy) is the
solution. Content would include issues of personal health andhappiness, economic and social issues, government regulations, how
to start or grow a business, how to negotiate a loan or to compare prices,how to get a job, how to have a happy family, etc.
- The integration of reading and writing exercises into the above.
Such exercises must be accompanied by charts, posters, (and otheraudio-visual aids), newspapers, and follow-up reading. Important,
too, is the use of mobile libraries so that reading is a constantdiscovery and an opportunity for adults to become life-long learners.
