Hi Everyone,
The 2022 STAR (STudent Achievement in Reading) research synthesis was recently released here. A few findings from the report I found interesting:
- “Forty-three million adults demonstrate low proficiency in reading comprehension.” This is a huge problem we are addressing in adult education!
- Background knowledge is crucial to comprehension: “Instructionally, activities that probe learners’ prior knowledge of a reading topic (e.g., first reading aloud a headline or title and discussing before moving to reading the text) may help to activate or build up some knowledge prior to reading.”
- Assessment of individual reading components (alphabetics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) is vital. Typical reading assessments given at program intake do not address all the reading components. “One needs to be sensitive to students' initial ability in order to determine which specific component measures are important and interacting with others, and thus which instructional techniques are most appropriate to target when and for whom.”
What are your take aways from this research synthesis?
Thanks for your thoughts,
Steve Schmidt, Moderator
LINCS Reading and Writing Group
Comments
Hi Steve and all, I appreciate your sharing this research synthesis, Steve. Recently, I've been hearing a lot about the importance of building learners' knowledge. Knowing something about a topic before reading, clearly supports comprehension. For instance, learners who have knowledge about the game of baseball can respond more accurately to a text about baseball compared to those who have no knowledge of the game.
Teaching reading should not be only be about teaching reading strategies such as identifying the main idea, although-- as we all know!-- standardized tests require learners to do so.
Here's a link to a blog post by expert Natalie Wexler who writes about the importance of instruction that builds knowledge. In this piece, she comments on a recent randomized control study conducted in K-12 that showed impressive results for a curriculum designed to build background knowledge. This is only one study and the context is K12, so we have to be cautious in drawing conclusions for our work in adult literacy education; however, it is good to see that the STAR synthesis points to knowledge building as critically important.
What does knowledge building look like when teaching reading to the adults who show up in our programs?
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, English Language Acquisition Group