Literacy Tutor Update : Tania's Learning Group

Hey Everybody,

Hope you are all well.  I just finished my third class coaching adults in literacy and so far it has been great fun.  I have an unusual arrangement.  One of the tutors was leaving New York for a month and asked Ken if I could sub for her during her time away.  I had met this tutor when I did my observation of her class.  We hit it off and the rest is history.

The class I've taken over consists mostly of four or five women, ranging from the age of 35 to perhaps mid 40s.  They hail from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Guyana and our very own Jamaica, Queens. They are reading I think at a third grade level.    We meet at the Central Adult Learning Center every Monday and Thursday, 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. 

The tutor and I work a little differently than what was taught in the tutor training workshop. We don't do silent reading. Everybody always reads aloud. This helps us as tutors pick up any mistakes that are being made. We also correct ungrammatical or pronunciation errors, but we do so gently and never harp on an error.  The students don't mind and the extra help definitely makes them better readers. I seen improvement in just the three sessions.

Homework is given sparingly, although I have made it a point of giving each student a list of five to eight words to define and put in sentences after every session.  If they do it, great. If they don't, we don't sweat it. We can do the assignment right there at the table. The words usually come from the story we have read, but also from any discussion that arises. For example, one of the words they had to learn was peroxide, because one of the students arrived in class with dyed blond hair and was sharing the process of hair coloring with everybody.  They also had to learn carburetor and transmission, because another student bragged about her expertise in fixing cars. Today's words included marathon, because one just happened, climate, because everybody was stumbling over the word in the text we read, and whole, because they kept confusing this word with hole.

We also discuss a little geography if it comes up in the text. I grab a globe and the students must find the region, country, island, continent, etc. on it. We discuss phonetics as well. One student kept complaining about seeing an upside e every time she encountered a pronunciation key.  At the next session we discussed how the upside down e is part of the phonetic alphabet and is pronounced "uh." 

These strategies seem to be working mostly because the students are at a fairly high reading level. I'm not sure if I would employ these techniques with students who are trying to learn the alphabet.

Well that's it for now.  If anybody has any tips or stories about their literacy tutor experience, please share.  Knowledge is power.

Cheers.

Tania