Teaching Learners What Reading Is All About
Step 3: Focus on an aspect of your practice
“Goals for Reading” is the topic of the first three lessons in the guide.
- In lesson one, learners review their own reading habits and strategies and identify the kinds of reading they would like to improve. Learners are asked to brainstorm the times from the day before that they came across text that they needed to read. Then the teacher leads a discussion on strategies that they used when they needed to read and write, such as pictures, getting someone else to help read it, and so on. For homework learners are asked to bring in items from their daily lives that they need or want to read, as well as to think about other strategies reading.
- Lesson two builds on this first lesson as learners explain the role reading plays in their lives by identifying the kinds of text they need or want to read regularly. They also explore the role they would like reading to have in their lives by investigating what reading means to experienced readers. For homework, learners interview people they know about their reading habits.
- Learners continue to explore what, how, and why experienced readers read and apply this knowledge to their own reading process in lesson three. Learners then set reading goals in their roles as family members, workers, individuals, and community members.
How to use this research:
- Review the handout Reading Goals [PDF], p. 21. How might you use this goal-setting process with your learners? Or, how might you modify it to meet your learners’ needs?
- How and when might you use Understanding What Reading Is All About: Teaching Materials and Lessons for Adult Basic Education Learners in your instruction and/or program?
Updated 7/27/07 ::
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