Working with Preliterate and Beginning Literacy Level Parents in Family Literacy and Parent Involvement Programs

The Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy has published a new practitioner’s guide:

Working with Preliterate and Beginning Literacy Level Parents in Family Literacy and Parent Involvement Programs (Colleen Shaughnessy and Esther Prins)

http://www.ed.psu.edu/educ/goodling-institute/professional-development/practitioner-guide-3-11-27-12

Please share with interested colleagues.

Best,

Esther

Comments

The information on preliterate levels of literacy is relevant to our local school district because of a high population of immigrants settling within our area.  We need to have both parent and student buy-in for the educational experience to be beneficial to our students.

 

Esther and Colleen,

Thank you for sharing this Practitioner’s Guide.  Colleen deserves a big KUDOS! for continuing to build upon her important research with preliterate Somali Bantu students.  I had the pleasure of meeting her at a TESOL convention when she was just completing her thesis, so it is special to see this great Practitioner’s Guide now!

My personal experience comes from working with orange pickers in central Florida who spoke Haitian Creole and indigenous languages spoken in Mexico and Central America.  All of the scenarios you present in this guide resonate 100% with me!  I did some calculations to try to determine the number of adult immigrants in Florida who ‘need to learn to English’ and came up with around 800,000 by using several sources of data.  Out of the 155,000 that our adult ESOL programs served last year about 10-15% of them would be considered to be preliterate, using the word preliterate as you have defined it.  Given that  more and more preliterate students began to enroll in our adult ESOL programs around the state in the early 2000’s, we have tried to devote more resources and training for teachers.  It is helpful that you have added to our inventory of resources. 

Especially noteworthy in the practitioner’s guide is your explanation of moving students from ‘concrete’ to ‘abstract.’  Every now and then, someone like you opens our eyes to see what was blurry before.  Often as teachers we have a sense that something important is going on as we try to teach our students in the best way we can, and when someone who has come upon an effective tool, it really helps.   

You probably know of the following practitioners and researchers who have been studying the adult ESOL preliterate population, but just in case others of your audience may not, here is the contact information for some of those who have helped teachers in our state.

Dr. Edwidge Crevecoeur-Bryant of the University of Central Florida has been studying Haitian adult ESOL populations for over a decade.  She is always happy to share her insights with anyone, and can be contacted at ecreveco@mail.ucf.edu.

Heide Spruck-Wrigley has been a wealth of information and help to us.  Her website is http://www.literacywork.com. Her email address is heide@literacywork.com

Patsy Vinogradov of Hamline University in Minnesota has provided us with reports on her studies as well.  She can be reached at patsy@multilingualminnesota.org or  patsyvino@yahoo.com

 

Nancy Faux of the State of Virginia adult ESOL program has worked to promote an international organization dedicated to working with adult language learners who are preliterate.  The organization is LESLLA, Low Educated Second Language Learner Adults.  Nancy can be reached at nfaux@vcu.edu.  The website for LESLLA is http://www.leslla.org/.  (Heide Spruck-Wrigley is also involved with LESLLA.)

Claire Valier is an adult ESOL educator and professional development trainer who has more than a decade of experience developing curriculum, evaluation methods and teaching strategies specifically for this population of adult ESOL students.  She can be reached at cvalh@aol.com.

Anyone who is interested in the resources of the State of Florida Department of Education can access our website at http://www.fldoe.org/workforce/adulted/.   The link for Curriculum has curriculum standards for preliterate adult ESOL students. The URL is http://www.fldoe.org/workforce/dwdframe/rtf/ESOL-LiteracySkills.rtf.  The link for resources has a screening tool for evaluating the literacy skills of adult ESOL students in 29 languages.  The URL is http://www.fldoe.org/Workforce/AdultEd/resources.asp.  Giving credit where it is due, Edwidge and Claire were  major contributors to these resources, along with other practitioners from Florida: Dr. Beatriz Díaz, Tony Lagos, Dr. Edwina Hoffman, Dr. Maria Koonce, Veronica Pavón-Baker, Karen Johnson, and Marie Philogene.

In addition to the State’s website, the websites of Florida TechNet and the Florida Literacy Coalition have resources for all adult educators. They also have links to resources for teaching preliterate adult ESOL students.  The URL for Florida TechNet is www.floridatechnet.org and the one for the Florida Literacy Coalition is www.floridaliteracy.org

Thank you again for presenting the field with this very useful resource!

Phil Anderson, Adult ESOL Program Specialist, Florida Department of Education (850) 245-9450

 

 

Thank you, Phil, for providing so many resources for working with pre-literate learners. I would like to add the following link to a brief by Patsy Vinogradov  (mentioned below in Phil's message) and Martha Bigelow http://www.cal.org/adultesl/resources/briefs/using-oral-language-skills.php

Using Oral Language Skills to Build on the Emerging Literacy of Adult English Learners.

Patsy Vinogradov and Martha Bigelow
University of Minnesota
August 2010

Miriam Burt

SME, Adult English Language Learners CoP