The Updated Teaching Adults to Read (TAR) LINCS Courses

Submitted by Steve Schmidt on Fri, 01/21/2022 - 14:31
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Hi Everyone,

This post is part of a series on the Teaching Adults to Read (TAR) courses. An earlier installment introduced TAR and discussed instructional routines. Let's answer a few questions about these courses!

Why are you highlighting these courses this month?

The Teaching Adults to Read (TAR) courses were recently updated by OCTAE. We want to get the word out that these newly enhanced courses are now available for adult educators to use.

Please provide an overview of each course.

Teaching Adults to Read: Teaching Beginning and Intermediate Readers is designed for instructors teaching adult learners from grade level equivalents 0 to 8.9 and contains the following sections:

Introduction
Diagnostic Assessment
Alphabetics
Vocabulary
Fluency
Comprehension

Teaching Adults to Read: Teaching Advanced Readers is designed for instructors teaching adult learners from grade level equivalents 9 to 12.9 and has these parts:

Introduction
Advanced Diagnostics and Text Selection
Advanced Comprehension Instruction
Advanced Vocabulary Instruction

How long should each course take to complete?

Teaching Adults to Read: Teaching Beginning and Intermediate Readers is estimated to take six hours to complete. Teaching Adults to Read: Teaching Advanced Readers should take four hours to do.

Are the Teaching Adults to Read (TAR) courses a replacement for STAR?

No, the TAR courses are not intended to replace the much more in-depth STudent Achievement in Reading (STAR) training. STAR provides more intensive professional development and is designed for intermediate level learners (grade equivalents 4 to 8.9). More information about STAR is available by contacting projectstar@manhattanstrategy .

What other questions do you have about these courses?

 

There's more to come,

Steve Schmidt, Moderator

LINCS Reading and Writing Group 

 

Comments

Hi Everyone,

Continuing our series on the updated Teaching Adults to Read (TAR) courses, we’ll focus on TAR’s vocabulary instruction advice. A frequently asked question concerns the best way to teach vocabulary and how many new academic words to teach at one time.

For instruction, the research-based recommendation from the course is to use “explicit instruction in word meaning and structure, involving:

“1. rich discussion and elaboration that embeds the word in the context of meaningful language

“2. multiple opportunities over time to interact with new words and word meanings in a variety of engaging contexts

“3. formative assessment of vocabulary learning”        (TAR course)

Having discussions with students about vocabulary is important. The more connections we can make with the new words to our students' lives, the more likely they will learn, remember, and apply these words. The course points to two sources of ready made lesson plans that teach Tier 2 words (academic vocabulary that crosses subject areas):  The Adult Learning Resource Center and new site that houses the ABSPD vocabulary lessons. To see a vocabulary lesson in action, visit the course's recommended video here. 

For the second question, how many new academic words to teach at one time, TAR recommends five to ten new words. In our elementary school experience, we may remember being given a slew of words to learn each week, but how many of those did we really retain? Beck, McKeown, & Kucan (2002) suggest introducing up to ten words and defer the exact number to instructor judgement depending on what else students are learning.

How many new academic words do you teach to your students at one time?

How do you introduce these words?

Thanks in advance for your input,

Steve Schmidt, Moderator

LINCS Reading and Writing Group

Hi Steve, 

Thank you for hosting this discussion. 

About a year ago I read the book Literacy in the Disciplines by Thomas DeVere and Diane Lapp and the chapter on academic vocabulary was really useful.

 Here are some ideas from the book. 

In 1984, Nagy and Anderson estimated that students needed to have knowledge of about 86,500 words to be academically successful.  This was reported years ago long before the internet and technology, so imagine the vocabulary increases now. 

Fisher and Blachowicz, suggested that effective vocabulary instruction should include: 

  • Actively engaging the learner in tasks that cause words to be learned
  • Personal connection with the words
  • Continually engaging learners in word learning 
  • Consolidate meaning by using multiple information sources

So many words... How do I make a selection? The framework developed by Flanigan and Greenwood helps with this. They state that the vocabulary we teach to students should be aligned with instructional strategies that support their learning of the words. Specifically, they propose four levels of vocabulary:

  1. critical words: critical to comprehend text and not fully supported in text
  2. foot in the door words: the text provides enough support to understand it
  3. critical "after words": add precision to the students' vocabulary, high utility or are well supported in text
  4. words not to teach: words students already know or words that do not match the instructional purposed of the lesson

The next step, once the vocabulary has been identified, would be to determine which words would be taught directly and which ones the students will learn indirectly from the reading. 

Some routines to introduce vocabulary:

  • Word Walls 
  • Thinking aloud with academic vocabulary 
  • Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy 
  • V-Tweets 

Happy Teaching! 

Lizelena 

LINCS Science Group

Thanks for hosting this great discussion, Steve. I know that all teachers understand how essential vocabulary is to reading comprehension. As you and others have pointed out, and as the LINCS course emphasizes, teaching vocabulary explicitly is essential.

I want to invite any members who are interested in going deeper into this topic, to join an upcoming discussion during the week of February 7 with our Illinois colleagues, Laurie Martin and Laura Sherwood, as they lead us in a conversation about teaching academic vocabulary. This discussion will take place in the English Language Acquisition community, but the content of the discussion will be relevant to all adult learners, not only those who are still learning English. 

Here's a link to the discussion -- Teaching Academic Vocabulary: Here, There and Everywhere!

Members can feel free to begin posting questions and comments even now.

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP

 

Hi Everyone,

One thing the TAR courses reminded me of is something I first learned in STAR training years ago: we need to teach the why. What is the why, and why should we teach it?  

The quote below is from the sample instructional routine part of the fluency section. It says,

“STEP 1: Explanation: The teacher explains/reminds a learner what fluency is and why it is important and/or what the target of the lesson is (accuracy, rate, or prosody) and why it is important.” (TAR Course, underlining for emphasis is mine)

The why means explaining to students the reason for learning a skill. Providing the why stirs learning motivation by giving students a purpose for learning.

So, how do we teach the why? A possibility could be something like this:

Learning ___________ will allow us to ____________ . Learning how to decode words will allow us to read sentences and paragraphs in a conversational tone. 

How do you teach the why to your students?

Thanks for your thoughts,

Steve Schmidt, Moderator

LINCS Reading and Writing Group