Adult Basic Reading Instruction
Best Practices Defined
Reader Profiles: Understand the Needs
Dr. John Strucker (1997) demonstrated how the "very mixed, uneven patterns of strengths and needs across the various components of reading" for adult learners create very different "student profiles". These differentiated needs demand very different instructional interventions. He illustrated in concrete terms what this "notion of uneven skills" means for instructional needs, and, in a 2003 research brief (Adult Reading Components Study: ARCS) went on to develop 10 to 12 "instructionally-relevant profiles" in the ABE learner population as a whole. "Sensitive, multi-component reading assessment" for all students highlights the uneven patterns in the different profiles.
In his brief What Silent Reading Tests Alone Can't Tell You: Two Case Studies in Adult Reading Differences, Strucker also asserts the value of including anecdotal evidence about adult readers' education and reading history for an even more comprehensive Reader Profile.
Mellard, Fall, and Mark’s 2009 "Reading profiles for adults with low-literacy: Cluster analysis with power and speeded measures." concludes,
In order for literacy education to be meaningful for the diversity of learners in adult basic and secondary education programs, or any other adult literacy program, the curriculum and instruction need to address the specific needs of each learner. Although nearly all the adults with low literacy in this study displayed comprehension deficits, their most pressing instructional needs varied. These variations in primary instructional needs, however, did not correspond to the functional assessment levels from CASAS and TABE. Our data support the value of assessing numerous reading-related skills and abilities rather than relying on one placement measure.
Component Assessment: A Plan and Tools to Download
In McShane, 2005, chapter 8, an easy-to-incorporate, step-by-step procedure for component assessment is detailed with the rational for each step clearly defined. If you are not accustomed to component assessment or how useful it is for guiding instruction, this is an important and informative chapter to read.
Step 1: Standardized Test of Silent Reading Comprehension
(CASAS/TABE) (For All Learners)
Offers useful, comparative data on students' silent reading abilities.
The original plan in McShane, 2005, uses a "Grade Level Equivalency, or GLE, 8" as the benchmark score for the decision for further assessments. Since then, though, all standardized tests used in adult education have been updated with changes to score correlations. Your institution can determine a score that makes sense from this recently (2018) updated resource "NRS Test Benchmarks for Educational Functioning Levels", which correlates all current and recent assessment benchmarks.
Step 2: Reader Questionnaire
(For All Learners)
Provides the qualitative data that offers insight into the learner's history as a reader, helping you establish a Reader Profile. Optimally, questionnaires are completed by students as a group then reviewed in 1-on-1 meetings between instructor and student within the first week of instruction. Time spent on students' Reader Profile Questionnaires is supported in the work of Snow & Strucker, 1999, in which they describe the risk factors children encounter that predict persistent reading challenges.
Step 3: Oral Reading Test for Fluency
(For All Learners)
"Ask each learner to read a short passage aloud, with accuracy, and count the number of words read in 1 minute. The ratio of words read correctly / total words read provides a simple Words Per Minute (WPM) measure." (McShane, 2005).
When reading at an appropriate text level, a score of 125 WPM indicates sufficient fluency to attend to comprehension. "Teachers need to listen to students read aloud to make judgments about their progress in reading fluency." (Zutell & Rasinski, 1991 in Hudson, 2005). Systematic observation helps assess student progress and determine instructional needs. Teachers observing students’ oral reading fluency should consider each critical aspect of fluent reading: word-reading accuracy, rate, and prosody
Fluency passages can be created from curriculum based materials, but this is very labor intensive because the Lexile Level has to be determined.
To measure the speed aspect of fluency, follow the recommendations in Hudson, 2005, and use Reading Skills for Today's Adults, an excellent fluency development resource developed by Southwest Adult Basic Education. Locate benchmark information to choose the appropriate text level HERE. For assessment, I recommend doing face-to-face to be able to explain the role of fluency in reading achievement, the procedure and the results to the student clearly.
Prosody: Qualitative Fluency Checklist
An informal assessment of prosody - intonation, tone, phrasing. Adapted from Hudson, 2005.
Decision Point in your Assessment Procedure
Identify at this point those students whose assessments to here indicate needed fluency and phonemic awareness instruction.
If Comprehension score > 8.0 GLE AND Fluency score > 125 WPM, BEGIN Instruction. NO Further Assessment Needed
If Comprehension score < 8.0 GLE OR Fluency score < 125 WPM, CONTINUE to Step 4 Assessment.
Step 4: Word Analysis (Decoding, Encoding)
The following resources will help you discover instructional needs at the word level, which are not uncommon even for learners assessing at a GLE 7 on a comprehension test.
Time is always a challenge in adult education classes, so individuals should decide if one or both of these assessments makes sense for context and needs. Using volunteers trained in the assessments is an option to gather more data early in the course.
Test encoding (spelling) with Sylvia Greene’s Informal Word Analysis Inventory. (also at LINCS)
Every letter combination is represented so that analysis of results allows for very specific, targeted instruction in phonemic awareness and decoding. Can be administered whole-group.
Test decoding using The Nonword Decoding Test (Turner, 1993). Research supports using nonsense words to assess a reader's knowledge of sound-letter combinations because then words cannot be recognized existing in the reader's sight vocabulary.
This informal assessment contains every letter combination in the English language, and offers quick and accurate insight into what students don't know about phonology; for example, what effects the way a vowel will sound.
Note: A basic understanding of the 6 syllable types is helpful to analyze the results and apply results to instruction. See Moats, 2009.
Alternative to this Plan
A fascinating approach to determining underlying reading needs is using the formula laid out in Simple View to Reading, (Farrell, et al, 2010).
The Simple View formula presented by Gough and Tunmer in 1986 is:
Decoding (D) x Language Comprehension (LC) = Reading Comprehension (RC)
Multiplied, not added. Significant because if the decoding score is 0, RC is also 0.
Since adult education programs all establish RC scores from standardized tests, we only have to get D scores, using a nonword decoding test. As per the formula, explicit instruction in D builds Decoding score and Reading Comprehension score at the same rate. (Farrell, 2010)
A Step 5, an Oral Vocabulary Test
While recommended in McShane, 2005, omitted here because subsequent research (Alamprese, 2010 and Mellard, 2011 ) has concluded that such assessments promote instruction that has only proven to have minimal effect on overall reading ability.