Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Answer Questions to Help with New Resource for Volunteer Tutors


   
  • In your experience, what are the most common questions volunteer tutors have about how to teach specific reading skills? 
  • What do volunteers—both new and veteran—need to know more about when it comes to teaching skills in the four components of reading:  alphabetics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension?  
  •  
  •  Answer these questions on our Blog and also send them to:
  •  prevedel@hotmail.com



Group: Reading and Writing
Discussion: Online resource for volunteer tutors (New)
Courtesy of Amy Prevedel

Hello everyone,
We wanted to let you know about an exciting online resource that is being designed to help volunteer tutors learn more about teaching reading effectively to adult basic education and literacy learners.  Volunteer tutors will be able to access tutoring strategies based on evidence-based research that address the specific needs of the learners they work with.  These resources will be available from any computer with Internet access.
LINCS Region 4 Professional Development Center is partnering with Portland State University’s LearnerWeb to develop 1-2 page summaries that will answer common questions volunteer tutors have related to teaching skills in the four components of reading: alphabetics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. The summaries will focus on a specific question about reading and answer it using content from LINCS Teaching Adults to Read face-to-face and online trainings and the publications upon which they were based. The summaries will also point tutors to additional resources that are more in-depth such as videos demonstrating relevant tutoring strategies, LINCS communities of practice, online courses, web resources and publications.
In order to make this online resource as useful as possible to as many volunteer tutors as possible, we’d like to ask for your help in answering these questions:
  • In your experience, what are the most common questions volunteer tutors have about how to teach specific reading skills? 
  • What do volunteers—both new and veteran—need to know more about when it comes to teaching skills in the four components of reading:  alphabetics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension? 
Your responses will help guide the direction of this project so we can best serve volunteers and ultimately, the learners they work with.  Any thoughts you can offer would be so valuable—and so greatly appreciated.
Please email your responses to Amy Prevedel at prevedel@hotmail.com, or Kathy St. John at katlit2003@yahoo.com.  Thanks in advance for your ideas!
Sincerely yours,
Amy Prevedel and Kathy St. John
Consultants, LINCS Region 4 Professional Development Center
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Monday, January 27, 2014

Feb 13 Webinar on the new Adult Literacy Assessment



Community Announcement: Time to Reskill: A Practitioner Engagement Event
Courtesy of Heidi

Join the U.S. Department of Education, American Institutes for Research, and adult education advocates for a webinar on February 13, from 1:00pm-3:00pm ET. With the recent release of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies, (PIAAC) demonstrating the direct relationship between skills and economic security, health, and educational advancement, there is even more urgency to address the needs of low-skilled learners and equip the teaching workforce to help such students achieve their academic and economic goals.
The Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) launched a national engagement effort on November 20 (see archived announcement) to explore ways to increase our national capacity to improve the foundation skills of adults in the United States. OVAE is particularly interested in engaging with adult educators to solicit their input into a forthcoming national action plan.
This webinar will be an opportunity to receive a briefing on the PIAAC data, the OECD’s special report on America’s low-skilled population, Time for the U.S. to Reskill?, and engage in a focused discussion about the issues facing adult education.
To prepare for the webinar, see the Consultation Paper, which provides background on the skills issue and the framework for the national action plan. The discussion will continue online in various groups within the LINCS Community of Practice. Bookmark the registration link for February 13, 1:00pm ET and stay tuned to LINCS for updates.