Teaching Reading 1,2,3 - The Order Matters

Submitted by Leecy Wise on Thu, 04/11/2019 - 11:10
  • 482 Views
  • 2 Comments

I attended a very helpful COABE Webinar on Monday, "Teaching Reading 1,2,3 - The Order Matters," presented by Kelley Provence, who has spent over 25 years developing and implementing programming across literacy disciplines. You will find that Webinar recording and its PowerPoint slides on our COABE Webinar-Resources site, https://www.coabe.org/webinar-resources. This webinar provided "a research-based framework for teachers and tutors to better understand the most effective sequence for teaching students to read. Understanding why sequence matters and being able to pinpoint where students are along their path will allow teachers to more effectively target lessons to focus on the students' current skill level. Components in learning to read include: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension."

After reviewing this Webinar, please add your ideas on how and when writing might be integrated into the process. What do you think? Leecy

Comments

Writing can be integrated into phonics instruction by having students write the words for the word patterns they are learning and helping them put those words into sentences or, since they are word patterns, or families, writing rhymes. Then students can read what they have written.

Di, I appreciate the practice of integrating writing and reading from the very start, as you suggested. That practice would point to writing skills developing in stages parallel to the reading process.

We often discuss reading as a process that develops through stages in most cases, going from alphabetics (phonemic awareness, phonics), to vocabulary, to fluency, and, finally, to comprehension, as discussed in the Webinar above. 

Questions:

  1. Is there a final step to that process that ends in writing, as some would suggest, or is writing a part of that process?
  2. Does writing development among adults happen in stages (spelling, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, essays, research papers) right along with reading development? 
  3. It is said that once a good reader always a good reader. Is the same true about writing, or do writing skills differ considerably depending on purpose?
  4. Does technology offer new tools that influence the stages of writing development if writing does develop in stages? 

Our LINCS Resource Collection includes a very useful writing guide, "Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy (TEAL) Just Write!" that does not deal with stages of writing specifically, as is often done in reading, but it offers much grist for the planning mill of writing among adults. 

What are your thoughts? For those who teach the writing "process" among adults in different programs, what do you think? Does it matter? Leecy