Reading and Writing for GED 2014 RLA

Submitted by Vicki Estrem on Tue, 02/26/2013 - 17:55
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Hello everyone-

 I am Vicki Estrem, adult education instructor for Minneapolis Adult Education. I also have the privilege of being a member of the GED 2014 Test Minnesota State Advisory Group. As our program makes plans to transition instructional practices to address the Reasoning Through Language Arts test, we are interested in hearing from other AE professionals about texts or materials you have used that integrate reading and writing skills. I look forward to reading your suggestions.

Comments

Vicki,

That's a great topic for discussion.

I imagine that staffs will find the change in GED emphasis as a bit of challenge for preparing learners.

We're probably all a little curious about how to best prepare students for the new item formats and computer-based responses.

Thank you for initiating the discussion.

Kind regards,

Daryl

I'm also struggling with this at the moment. Materials for GED prep that meet a comprehensive language arts curriculum don't seem to exist at the level our programs will need them.

To my surprise, I've found that advanced ESOL materials have been doing this for a long time. It sounds a little strange, but I'm interested for the following reasons:

  1. At the advanced levels, they often contain longer, in-depth readings with comprehension checks
  2. They address language arts comprehensively (reading, writing, grammar and often idioms all at the same time)
  3. They focus on vocabulary (the 2014 GED assumes students can understand a range of academic and technical vocabulary)

Currently I'm looking at the "From Reading to Writing" series (Series editor Linda Robinson Fellag). It utilizes the academic word list, features multiple lengthy reading selections per chapter and breaks down the writing process for multiple types of writing (a process essay, a personal essay a compare/contrast essay...).

While the advanced books in this series (books 3 and 4) aren't perfectly in line with the RLA test's readings or its writing standards, I think it does serve as an excellent "bridge unit" between lower level reading and writing and a true RLA-aligned unit. I'm going to continue investigating these types of books to see what other materials I can find. I expect that for that final RLA-aligned unit I may need to make it myself, relying on GED Testing Service's item samplers, test question types, assessment targets and most importantly the content samplers (all found in the assessment guide).

Thank you Vicki for this question and this thread... hope to hear much more from other programs!