Sample Reading Lessons

These draft lessons below-- beginning level, family literacy mixed level, and advanced level-- are adapted from a series of adult ESL trainings on effective reading instruction for adult English language learnes that were presented in Fairfax County, Virginia in 2004 and 2005. These examples can serve only as ideas to help trainers who want to develop their own complete and comprehensive lessons for demonstration during that portion of the draft CAELA Guide's reading module.

For more information and a complete pdf file of a reading program for trainers of adult ESL teachers, go to, Teaching Reading to Adult English Language Learners: A Reading Instruction Staff Development Program.

For more information about the CAELA Guide, please email caela@cal.org.

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Teaching Reading to Adult English Language Learners

Literacy Level

“Mesud’s Story”
From Collaborations: English in Our Lives, Literacy Worktext. Donna Moss, Cathy C. Shank, & Lynda Terrill. Heinle and Heinle. 1997
This story is useful at the beginning of a learning cycle. It focuses on learning strategies and studying outside of class.

Presentation (Pre-reading):            Predictions with the picture
                                                Listening to the story on the tape
                                                Discussion of answers to listening comprehension                                                                         questions

Practice (During-reading):            Reading along with the tape
                                                Silent reading
                                                Vocabulary check

Evaluation:                                Discussion
                       
Expansion (Post-reading):            Conversion Grid
                                                /p/ vs /b/
                                                Language practice—cloze with missing verbs

Conversation Grid

What’s your name?	What did you learn about Mesud that you think is interesting?	Do you study at home?	What helps you learn English?

 

Cloze Activity

I ____________ English at home.
I ____________ pictures with words.
I ____________ at the pictures.
I ____________ the words.
I ____________ the words.
The pictures ____________ me learn.

have          say          look          read          help          study

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Reading for Family Literacy/Mixed Levels: Pre-Reading Activities

 

TEXT: “Summer Programs”
Adapted from Fairfax County Public School Web site accessed February 23, 2005 from http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/news/sumsch.htm

(NOTE: This URL is no longer current , but this plan can serve as a model for using school information in a mixed level family literacy program)

Sometimes, family literacy teachers have the challenge of making higher-level, content-rich readings accessible to adult immigrants who need to understand authentic texts for real-life purposes.  Even if authentic texts from the public school, health department, or the government are not written at an academic level, they are often full of idiomatic words and phrases and elliptical structures.  Because of this, developing and presenting pre-reading activities become particularly important.

Pre-reading activities:       

Discussion:
Whole group brainstorm/review of the current school year, with questions such as when is spring break, teacher conferences, next report card, end of the school year, etc., writing selected info on the board

Ask parents what their children did last summer vacation and what do they think might happen this year; check understanding of “summer school” and amplify (e.g., when to register etc)

Presentation of Vocabulary:

Virginia Standards of Learning Assessments (SOL tests)

Enrichment opportunities

Fees

Central location

Special education
 
Retained sixth-graders

Conditionally-promoted sixth graders

Skimming and Scanning:  After handing out text, discussion and practice (review from previous lessons) on how to look at a whole text for clues to general meaning and specific data.

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Reading for Advanced Level Learners: History: Not as Easy as A-B-C
From: The Washington Post, November 9, 2004, Style Section, page C14

This article discusses the movie rating system used in the United States. Although it is a “Kids Post” article (found in the Style Section of the daily newspaper), it has high interest for adult learners and is an example of an authentic text. Previous to reading this article, the students must have already discussed and practiced the passive voice. They also should know the pronunciations of the past tense morpheme (“ed”).

 Note: when using photo-copied newspaper articles, be sure to bring the original article in and the rest of the newspaper, so students can locate articles and sections when reading articles on their own. Remember: You can only use newspaper articles within two weeks of publication.

Presentation (Pre-reading):

• Discussion of movies, how they select movies to see in the United States, movies they saw in their country, etc.
• Vocabulary introduction and discussion
• Chart of rating symbols discussed briefly after handing out the article

Practice (During-reading):

• Silent individual reading
• Individual identification of pre-taught vocabulary in the article
• Class discussion of pre-taught vocabulary as used in the article
• Class discussion of other vocabulary in article
  

Evaluation:

• Class discussion of questions
1. How do the films get their ratings?
2. What can the filmmaker do if he doesn’t like the rating his film receives?
3. What does PG refer to? Before 1984, what letter was used for this category? Why did the ratings board change it?
4. What two films that were released in 1984 caused the Motion Picture              Association of America to add the PG-13 category? Why?

Expansion (Post-Reading):

• Whole class reading of newspaper movie ad (from the Washington Post,3/10/05, to identify the rating code for each movie
• Students individually select a movie for

            1. the whole family    
2. two twelve-year-old children
            3. two teenagers, one 16 years old, the other 18 (on a date)
            4. themselves and their friends (or spouses)

• Students discuss selections with a classmate
• Whole group review of  passive voice: focus on past tense morpheme /t/ /D/  /ID/
• Students work in pairs to identify passive verbs in article
• Class discussion of passive voice use in article
• Homework: students to find newspaper articles written with passive voice and bring the articles to class the next session.