Dr. Edwidge Crevecoeur-Bryant has done several studies on low literacy
students in Florida.  I remember from one of her presentations that
non-literate students typically went to the middle of a piece of paper
when they were asked to point to something on the page, or to write
something on it.  Edwidge can be reached at the Univeristy of Florida -
Gainesville.  Her email is ecbryant at coe.ufl.edu. 

 

When I was in the classroom teaching adult ESOL in central Florida, I
had non-literate students that started to enter my classes that were
being held in the community room of a farmworker housing neighborhood.
The class was open-entry, open-exit.  I already had 15 or so students
that were literate, and about 5-10 non-literate students began to come.
The non-literate students did not come by themselves, but always in the
company of a relative or friend.  This class was the only evening adult
ESOL class in a town of 16,000, and it was sponsored by the community
college in the area.  The town had an immigrant population of 4,000, or
1/4th of the total population.  Most of the immigrants were from Mexico,
Haiti, and Guatemala.   The non-literate students in the class spoke
Haitian Creole mainly, with two or three students speaking indigenous
languages of Mexico or Central America. I had the class year-round, four
nights per week for about 3 years.   

 

After one year,  it was clear to me that the non-literate students were
not making the "progress" I expected them to make.   I began to search
for resources and to ask colleagues for help. Heide Spruck-Wrigley's
book "Bringing Literacy to Life" (1992, Aguirre International Press) was
a big help to me.   Anotther helpful text was Basic Literacy Workbooks A
and B, by Joan Saslow, of Pearson Educatiion.  Picture dictionaries also
proved helpful.  

 

"Connect the classroom to the student's lives!" was one of the main
tecnniques I learned from it.   When I began to do real-life needs-based
projects with the non-literate students, ones that helped them do
something they really wanted to do in their everyday lives, everything
began to fall into place.  Some of them simply wanted to be able to sign
their name in cursive "like everyone else."  Others wanted to hold a
Bible and read a special verse they already knew by heart.  Or one of
their special hymns from their church hymnal.  Others wanted to be able
to write out their social security number on a form.   

 

I finally began to prepare any number of different exercies to practice
the same thing.   We did a variety of exercies that got them up and out
of their chairs to practice, practice, practice.  We taped a line on the
floor and had contests of throwing wadded up paper balls at pictures of
letters, objects, people.  We used a digital camera to take a picture of
each other showing some type of injury or symptom: toothache, headache,
backache.  The next day we pasted our pictures on the wall and threw our
paper balls at the pictures upon request of another student.  We used
sandpaper letters and numbers. 

 

I learned at an ESOL training that the skin is a key receptor of
information, and when we use our skin to touch or feel somehting we are
trying to learn, we remember it better.   We put information on "body
pegs" on our head, our shoulders, our hips, our laps, our knees and
feet. And we proved to ourselves that we could truly remember new
vocabulary better than if we sat and copied the words on paper.  We used
color, we used songs and chants, we used boxes of real things from home,
we used magnetic letters, we used my son's LEGO blocks with letters and
words written on them to build words and sentences.   We squeezed rubber
balls while we chanted and marched around the room.   We stood up and
clapped for ourselves when we finished an exercise.  We formed two or
three groups in the room and had shouting contests to see who could
chant the loudest any motivational phrase that seemed to fit best with
the work we had done that evening.  

 

Another precept I learned during that time was never to deny a student
an opportunity to do an exercise that he or she thought was "necessary."
Many ot the non-literate students had an image of what people are
supposed to do in "school" such as tracing, copying, memorizing, holding
books and silently reading, going to the board and writing.  I was
trying my best to be a cutting edge teacher and I was excited to use
many exercises that brain research showed would produce better results
faster. However, if the student's perception of what "school" meant was
not validated, the student's anxiety level remained high, and they were
not as pleased with the class as I thought they would be.  

 

Dr. Beatriz Diaz, Adult ESOL Coordinator of Miami Dade County public
shools,  has developed a Teacher Resource Kit specially designed for
teaching low literacy ESOL students.  She can be contacted at
bdiaz.dadeschools.net.  I have the list of resources to make a kit, as
well as the final report on that project.  I would be glad to send it as
an attachment to anyone off line, if desired.

 

On a personal note, my mother-in-law, an elderly Haitian woman lived
with us  for a couple years.. "Grandma" could not read or write in any
language, but before she had a stoke, could look at a dress in a store
and sew it without a pattern.   She lived in a small village that had
one store that did not even sell writing paper for school children.
While she lived with us, she and my wife always went out early on
Saturday mornings to local yard sales.  One Friday evening, Grandma gave
us all a big surprise.  She began to suspect that my wife wasn't going
to go to yard sales the next morning. She went to the pile of
newspapers, sorted through the stack, found the section that has yard
sales listed, and brought it to my wife.  She had been observing how my
wife got information about yard sales, and she had learned what to do to
get the information.  But after six months or so with us, she was
beginning to use the newspaper to get what she wanted.

 

Philip Anderson

Adult ESOL Program

Florida Department of Education

Tel (850) 245-9450

 

________________________________

From: robinschwarz1 at aol.com [mailto:robinschwarz1 at aol.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 8:38 PM
To: englishlanguage at nifl.gov
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3719] Re: ESL for low literacy students

 

Barbara-- I missed this yesterday when I was reading and responding.
This is terrific and right in line with quite a few studies showing that
one behavior typical of non-literate adults is that they do not scan
visual fields in any systematic way unlike literate adults, who scan
according to whatever system they have learned in (L to R, top to
bottom, R to Left) .  You have given some wonderfully concrete ways to
address this training.  I find that this lack of scanning habit extends
for a long time-- I think  I wrote yesterday about a lady I tutor who
has great difficulty even after several semesters of school and after
teaching herself to read.  When she looks at a page with activities on
it, she is as likely to start at the bottom as the top and she sees no
logic yet in those exercises that have you look at a model in the left
column and then find something similar or opposite or whatever in the
row to the right.  She goes all over the page!  I will try this with her
next week!   Robin Lovrien Schwarz

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Barbara Caballero <barbaracaballero at sbcglobal.net>
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List
<englishlanguage at nifl.gov>
Sent: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:10 am
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3604] ESL for low literacy students

Good morning,




It's easy to forget the importance of training our students to move
their eyes 




from left to right when they look at words, text, charts, cartoons.  A
good idea 




is for the teacher to move his/her closed-finger, flat hand along
beneath the 




material, from left to right, whether teaching one-to-one with a book,
or in the 




classroom with a board.









With pictures, continue this technique.  If you want your student(s) to
practice 




saying "red" and you have a picture with red things in it, guide your
student's 




focus around the picture by moving your hand clockwise around the
picture, left 




to right.  This helps them get in the habit.









Even as students make progress and begin to look at full paragraphs, I
continue 




to use this technique so that they learn to read to the end of the line
and come 




around to the far left of the line below.  









This technique is also useful when practicing choral reading, to improve





fluency.  ESL karaoke.









It's basic, but important.









Barbara Rotolo-Caballero




English at Work




Austin, Texas




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National Institute for Literacy




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Email delivered to robinschwarz1 at aol.com





 

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