Literacy Development

Literacy is a key foundational skill of Western academic culture, but it may be a skill that students are new to. They may come from a culture with oral traditions rather than written ones, or have an interrupted formal education (SIFE) background.

Teaching literacy for these students will look different than teaching it to students entering into kindergarten or coming from a strong written language background. These are some high-impact practices to help develop strong literacy skills.

C0-creating Authentic Texts

Texts used in school settings often have a bias towards white male authors. Because of this, context may be far removed from students' experiences, making them unauthentic to our students, and this can add an extra barrier to comprehension.

However, it can be difficult to find texts at the appropriate level that are authentic to the students. One solution to this is having the students themselves create texts that can then be reused with future students.

Example 1: Language experience approach

This approach connects the students' lived experiences in their new country to literacy, making critical connections between the written word and practical language for everyday life. There are many ways to carry out this exercise, and the following is one outline of a lesson plan.

The class shares an experience together such as going to a supermarket or preparing a meal. (Vocabulary words related to this experience is be pre-taught.)
The teacher or an assistant should take photographs of the experience for the next step.

In a following class, the teacher should show the photographs to the class, and ask them to describe what is happening.

The teacher compiles the words and phrases that the students share on the board or screen into a story form.

The students should then copy this story into their notebooks.

The next day, the students can be asked to read the story silently to themselves, and then to follow along with their finger as the teacher reads aloud.

Finally, the students should repeat the story line by line after the teacher, and then the class can read the story all together.

The sky is the limit as to what activities can be done using this story. You can find an excellent example of this approach on the New American Horizons website under their adult ESL training video section, here.