Session 8
Reading and writing 2
The purposes of this session are to explore ways of:
 supporting learners with their real-life uses of reading and writing
 responding to the writing learners do within the literacy class
Activity
Activity 1:
Reflection on
session 7
Activity 2:
Responding to a
learner’s writing
Activity 3:
Reading online
Time
5
Activity 4:
Responding to a
real-life literacy task
Activity 5:
Responding to writing
Activity 6:
Recap on reading
and writing
Activity 7:
Homework tasks
30
Activity 8:
Reflective diaries
Activity 9:
Evaluation
Tea break
5
Total minutes
ITALL revised pack 2014
Resources
Participants’
reflective
diaries
8T1a and 8T1b Pieces of learners’
writing
30
20
Copies of
recent
webpage or
Computers
with internet
access
(optional)
Flipchart
20
15
5
Handout/Tasksheet/OHP
8H1 Reflection on session 7
LIC pack or
pp.5–16
issued in
session 2
8T2 Unison letter for learner
8T3a&b Unison letter for tutor
8T4 Observer’s sheet
8T5 Learners’ writing grid
8H2 Possible responses to 8T5
8T6 Recap on reading and writing
8 OHP1 Effective writing
8T7 Homework tasks
8T8 Learning from mistakes
2T4 Homework task
1T7 Reflective diary
10
10
150
1/15
Education Scotland
Session 8
Reading and writing 2
Aim
To help participants:
 explore ways of responding to a learner’s real-life literacy tasks and to the
work that the learner produces as part of their learning
Outcome
Participants will:
 have looked at strategies to use when responding to learner’s writing
ITALL revised pack 2014
2/15
Education Scotland
8A1
Activity 1
5 minutes
Reflection on session 7
8H1
The purposes of this activity are to:
 encourage participants to develop a reflective approach to their practice
 highlight the basic principles of adult literacies learning
For discussion:
 Any questions about the last session?
 Any thoughts from your reflective diaries that you would like to share?
 Any comments about this handout?
 Any thoughts from background reading?
Introduction to session 8
In this session we will be looking at:
 how a tutor might respond to their learner’s writing
 the reading required to get information from a website
 working together to help a learner who needs to write a letter
 how our responses to a learner’s writing will be influenced by its context
 the knowledge, skills and understanding implicit in reading and writing
activities
 summarising the strategies and approaches to reading covered in
sessions 5–8
ITALL revised pack 2014
3/15
Education Scotland
8A2
Activity 2
30 minutes
Responding to a learner’s writing
8T1a and 8T1b
The purpose of this activity is to:
 explore ways of responding to a learner’s writing
In large group
1) Look at the example of Helen’s writing
on 8T1a and discuss responses.
ITALL revised pack 2014
4/15
Learning points include
1) Possible responses and
work for two sessions
 give positive feedback to
the learner
 read the sentence aloud to
show you can understand it
easily
 ask the learner to mark the
words he thinks might be
spelt wrongly.
 knowing which words are
wrong is half way to getting
them right
 all the mistakes show the
learner knows a lot already
about how to spell
 copy the sentence out with
correct spelling
 choose words to practise
 encourage Helen to add
another sentence
 Helen or tutor types and
prints the sentences
 use language experience
approach to generate more
text
 discuss and try different
ways of learning spelling
 look at some reading
material on a topic Barry is
interested in
3 (a)
 positive about the content
 praise her choice of
descriptive words
 ask for more information
 ask the learner’s opinion
Education Scotland
3 (b)
 do more writing
Activity 2 (continued)
In small groups
2) Appoint a recorder and a timekeeper.
3) Look at 8T1b.
a) How do you respond?
b) What kind of work might you suggest
doing over the next two sessions?
Write your answers on a flipchart.
In whole group
4) Display flipcharts and discuss answers.
a) What do you think you might find
difficult as a tutor?
b) What points are important for the
learner in the process?
Learning points include
(continued)
3 (a)
 positive about the content
 praise his choice of
descriptive words
 ask for more information
 ask the learner’s opinion
3 (b)
 practice proofreading
 do more writing
 word processing
 discuss planning what
Barry wants to write about
 discuss and try out ways of
learning spelling
 ask the rest of the group for
comments
4 (a)
 balancing work on content
and skills
 knowing how to pitch the
level of suggestions so the
writing improves, without
taking it over
 timing
4 (b)
 getting positive feedback
 concerns being taken
seriously
 offered choices
ITALL revised pack 2014
5/15
Education Scotland
8A3
Activity 3
20 minutes
Reading online
Printout of webpage
The purpose of this activity is to:
 seek ways of working on the type of reading required in order to absorb
information from a website
NOTE FOR TRAINERS: This activity benefits
from being done on computers with online
access if enough are available for there to be
one computer for every two or three
participants.
In two groups each with a trainer
A friend has recommended this web page to
your learner, Ali. Ali says he hasn’t used the
internet, although he did some computing at
school and plays computer games sometimes.
1) Which skills does he already have?
2) What additional knowledge and
understanding does Ali need in order to
make use of websites such as this?
Learning points include
1)




use of mouse
typing
menus
willing to try things on
computer
2)
 web addresses
 using a search engine
 hyperlinks – underlined text
is a link to click on
 layout of web pages
 navigation – getting back to
the original page
 knowing who the website
belongs to: ‘.ac’ means a
college or university;
‘.co.uk’ means British
company; ‘.com’ means a
commercial organisation
 date of the input
Answers will depend on the
web page chosen, for
example:
 emails sent in by readers of
the Daily Record may
include spelling mistakes
 a football club site may
want to sell merchandise
 in a chatroom, people may
not be telling the truth
about themselves
ITALL revised pack 2014
6/15
Education Scotland
Activity 3 (continued)
3) Think back to strategies for working on
reading that have been covered in the
training – which ones might you use with
Ali to develop his reading when using texts
such as this?
ITALL revised pack 2014
7/15
Learning points include
(continued)
3)
 using a list of critical
questions
 changing the size of the
print to make it easier to
read
 choosing good-quality
websites (such as the BBC
one) to see how the same
topic is covered for further
practice
 encouraging Ali to send an
email to a football or
newspaper site
 printing off pages so that
Ali can work on them at
home
 using the text from the
website to devise exercises
as in the language
experience example
Education Scotland
8A4
Activity 4
30 minutes
Responding to a real-life literacy task
8T2, 8T3, 8T4
The purpose of this activity is to:
 seek ways of responding to a learner who wants to work on a real-life reading
and writing task
In the whole group
1) What would you do if a learner came in with an official letter he or she didn’t
understand?
2) Write suggestions down on a flipchart.
Divide participants into groups of three, each with a learner, a tutor and an
observer
For the purposes of the role play, the learner has a version of the letter which
isn’t easy to understand – 8T2b.
The tutor and the observer have a version that they can read – 8T3b – which was
already used in session 7.
3) Act out the following scenario.
a) The learner has brought in a letter that s/he doesn’t fully understand.
b) The tutor has to respond.
c) The observer notes on 8T4 what happens during the interaction.
4) What would you do if a learner brought this letter in and wanted to do something
with it?
5) Tutor starts off by saying “How have things been this week?” Continue in
allocated roles until the learner agrees that the task is finished.
If necessary, stop the role play after 10–15 minutes, so there is time for feedback
and discussion.
ITALL revised pack 2014
8/15
Education Scotland
Activity 4 (continued)
In whole group
6) Discuss how tutors, learners and observers
found the exercise.
a) How did you feel in your roles?
b) Were there any surprises in the
process?
c) Who decided what you did about the
letter?
d) What was the tutor’s initial response?
What other responses might have
been helpful?
e) What did you decide to do with the
letter?
f) What might the learner want to do
with the letter?
g) What points are important for the
learner in the process?
h) Mention that the words in English in
the letter were based on the Dolch list
(see 5H3 The most frequently used
words in written English) discussed
in the reading session.
Summary




consult the learner
discuss options
sometimes if a learner is anxious the
right course is to help them get the
task done within the time available,
which may mean becoming a scribe
for the learner or helping with word
processing
a real-life task such as this can then
be used as a starting point for working
on various aspects of literacy
ITALL revised pack 2014
9/15
Learning points include
6 (d)
 ask if the learner minds if
the tutor reads the whole
letter
 offer the learner a choice
about whether he or she
wants to have it read out
loud or explained by the
tutor
 ask what they understand
about it so far
 depending on urgency, use
pre-reading strategies so
that the learner can identify
more of it
 ask what the learner wants
to do about letter
6 (e) and 6 (f)
 reply to it immediately
 reply briefly now and at
length later on
 word process a reply
 work on longer words for
reading
 complain to the company
about content of letter
 telephone the company
6 (g)
 to be treated with respect
 to be given choices
 to keep control of what is
happening
Education Scotland
8A5
Activity 5
20 minutes
Responding to writing
8T5, 8H2
The purpose of this activity is to:
 explore responses to a learner’s writing
In whole group
1) Look at the learners’ writing grid (8T5).
2) Complete one column together.
10 minutes
In groups of three
3) Complete the other columns.
4) Before deciding on your response, think about why the learner is writing in that
way as well as what the audience is for the writing.
In the whole group
5) Discuss
a) Which option did participants find the hardest to respond to?
b) Do answers vary?
c) Are there any issues that need group discussion? Often the most difficult to
respond to is informal personal writing. If the learner can understand it and it
is primarily written for personal purposes, should formal conventions of writing
still be applied?
6) Refer to handout 8H2 (Possible responses to 8T5) briefly. Participants to read it
over more fully at home.
ITALL revised pack 2014
10/15
Education Scotland
8A6
Activity 6
15 minutes
Recap on reading and writing
8T6, 8 PPT1
The purpose of this activity is to:
 reinforce the learning about strategies and approaches to reading and writing
that have been covered in sessions 5, 6, 7 and 8
8T6 lists some of the approaches we have
covered in the last four sessions and some
of the points that have come out of our
discussions.
5 minutes
In pairs
1) Look at the list and decide for each
bullet point whether it is relevant to
working on reading, or writing, or both.
2) Add some additional strategies or
approaches that have not been listed
here yet have been covered.
In whole group
3) Are there any examples of additional
points?
4) Any further questions or comments on
reading and writing?
Show 8 PPT1 Effective writing.
5) What is the message in the iceberg
diagram?
6) How would an iceberg diagram look
for reading?
ITALL revised pack 2014
11/15
Learning points include
1) The majority of bullet points
are relevant to both reading
and writing
2) and 3)
 handwriting – deciding on
what to improve, practising
joins
 using phonics
 using ICT to work on both
reading and writing
 simplifying texts
 using real-life texts brought
in by the learner
5) We tend to concentrate on
the surface aspects of writing
and may not always be aware
of the importance of those
shown as below the surface.
6)
 above the surface:
decoding – saying the
words, reading aloud
fluently, answering
straightforward factual
questions on the text
 below the surface: thinking
about writer’s purpose,
being aware of the many
factors that influence how
we respond to text
Education Scotland
Activity 6 (continued)
Input
The iceberg is one way of thinking about the skills, knowledge and understanding of
a competent reader and writer. We tend to concentrate on the most visible aspects,
and the learners tend to formulate their initial goals round these aspects.
As a tutor, you have to:
 help the learner become aware of the less obvious aspects
 find out about the learner’s real-life uses of reading and writing
 offer a variety of approaches to reading and writing so that the learner can
discover what works best for him or her
 reinforce learning by returning to the same points in a variety of ways
ITALL revised pack 2014
12/15
Education Scotland
8A7
Activity 7
5 minutes
Homework tasks
8T7, 8T8, 2T2
Ask participants to:
 read through all the course materials from this session
 continue to work on their reflective diaries
 work through 8T8 Learning from mistakes
 read through the case study on Derek (from 2T2 Homework tasks, pp.5–16 of
the LIC pack, section on tutoring and guidance)
ITALL revised pack 2014
13/15
Education Scotland
8A8
Activity 8
5 minutes
Reflective diaries
1T7
The purposes of this activity are to:
 encourage participants to begin to reflect on their own learning experiences
 see this as a valuable tool for literacies tutors
Reflection time is built into every session as a contribution to evaluation.
 Emphasise the value of a reflective approach for tutors and learners in adult
literacies learning.
 Take some time to reflect on the session and to make your own notes, using
either the sheets or booklet provided or your own method.
Encourage participants to continue the exercise through the week.
ITALL revised pack 2014
14/15
Education Scotland
8A9
Activity 9
10 minutes
Evaluation
The purpose of this activity is to:
 underline the importance of evaluation for tutoring in adult literacies
Use the evaluation method you have agreed with the group.
ITALL revised pack 2014
15/15
Education Scotland