Literacy Connection

The, of, and, a, to!

Those words don’t exactly stir the heart.  One of the first steps for a beginning reader on the path to coping better at work, reading their mail and supporting their kids in school is putting some time and effort into recognizing the most common words on sight.  Often time spent drilling these words can feel like a chore.

One of our tutors, Margaret Stuhr, was working on the Fry List of most common sight words with her beginning reading student and came up with a creative way to make practicing these words more interesting than just flipping through flashcards.  She created sentences and stories built mainly out of the Fry words. 

For example, the following sentence comes from the group of sentences about the first 50 words:

What is your name?

The first three words are bold because they are in the first 50 words of the Fry List.  “Name” is also on the Fry List, in the 2^nd hundred words, so it’s a good word to be practicing.  It’s not bolded here, because this group of sentences is meant to focus on the first 50 words. 

Click here to try these materials out with your learners.  There are sets of sentences for the first 50 words and the first 100 words as well as two stories for the first 100 words, “To Write or not to Write” and “Water, Water, Water”.

This is the first post in what we hope will be an ongoing series where tutors share about their tutoring experiences, Tutor-to-Tutor. Thanks to Margaret for letting us share her experience with sight words today. You might want to share about successes or struggles you had tutoring, materials that you really like or tricks and techniques that work for you.

To share your tutoring experiences with other tutors, please E-mail a draft of what you’d like to share to Josh Anderson (janderson [at] waukeganpl [dot] info), Janet Wigodner (jwigodner [at] waukeganpl [dot] info) or Laura Sherwood (lsherwood [at] clcillinois [dot] edu). We want the blog to be a venue for sharing, feedback and collaboration amongst tutors.

Each Spring, Lake County’s adult learners become published authors in an anthology titled Collections, thanks to the Literacy Volunteers of Lake County. Adult learners work with their tutors and instructors to submit their written work for the book. Collections offers a terrific opportunity for students to celebrate their writing achievements and share their stories.

This year’s Collections book release party will be held on Tuesday, April 30, from 6:30 to 8:00 pm, in the Ray Bradbury Room of the Waukegan Public Library. Students will be presented with a copy of the anthology and have a chance to read their work for their friends, family, teachers and tutors. The written pieces are fun, heartwarming and insightful. Please join us for this celebration!

What’s this? 

It’s a neuron!  Learning happens when these little guys connect in your brain.  And when they don’t?  That’s when tutors have to get creative.

 Tutors have the opportunity to sign up free of charge for a full-day training on Reading Disabilities and Content Learning through the Literacy Volunteers of Illinois (LVI) in Chicago. 

Reading Disabilities
This session covers the considerations and strategies for working with adults with learning disabilities who struggle with reading. Topics will include identifying skills needed to be a successful reader, discussing the four common types of Reading Disabilities and investigating some instructional strategies that can develop reading skills.

Content Learning
This session covers instructional approaches that can help adults with Learning Disabilities learn content from written materials. We will examine how to support content learning using explicit instruction principles and flexible learning tools such as graphic organizers. 

Click here to connect to LVI’s site and get all the details about the training including information about registration. 

This training is Modules 5 and 7 of the Learning to Achieve series of trainings that distills best available research on Learning Disabilities in adults.  Even if you are not working with a Learning Disabled student or students, the Content Learning portion of the training will provide solid instructional principles and techniques for use with all adult learners.  

For those of you who attended the Explicit Instruction for Strategy Learning session at WPL at the end of February, that was an abbreviated version of Module 4 from the same training series.  If you won’t be able to make the training but are still interested in more info about Learning Disabilities, check out the online courses available through LINCS. 

A new group received adult literacy tutor training from Laura Sherwood and Josh Anderson in February.  We welcome you to the Lake County Tutoring Program and look forward to working with you!

The next tutor training session is planned for June, with an orientation session on May 30. Please contact Josh, janderson [at] waukeganpl [dot] info or Laura, lsherwood [at] clcillinois [dot] edu for more information.  

The tutor training manual is now available on the Waukegan Public Library Be a Tutor web page. 

Back row:  Kevin Kleine, Steve Knutson, Nancy Schabell, Peg Fredrickson, Barbara Blair, Amy Onan, Kathryn Polyack, Bill Scheddin

Center row:  Robert Hunter, Leslie Fretzin, Holly Staunton, Jim Meyerhoff, Lynette Ahlquist, Traci Crowley, Sarah Paveglio

Front row:  Laura Sherwood, Domenica DiCosola, Josh Anderson