YWCA Adult Literacy and Learning
Tutor Talk
Fall 2011
Everything I Know About Success
…I learned from Weight Watchers.
My first week on the plan, I lost 3.6 pounds. My sixth week, I received a sticker for losing five
pounds. Last week – week twelve – I got a sticker for having lost five percent of my starting weight.
(I didn’t even realize I had a five percent goal.) Next week, I’m looking forward not so much to
earning another five-pound sticker or receiving more applause at the meeting, but to seeing a
smaller digit in the tens column on the scales.
I had to laugh as I read the booklet I got with my 5% sticker. “Nice work!” it begins. “You lost 5%
of your starting weight. That’s no small accomplishment. In fact, it’s a perfect indication that you
are building the skills you need to reach your ultimate goal – and every smaller goal you set along
the way.” It continues, “Having an ultimate weight goal in mind is important for bigger picture
motivation, but everyday boosts of inspiration are best fueled by smaller goals – the ones that are
just within sight. Because of this, our goal-setting strategy focuses more on the next step than it does
on the final step.”
Weight Watchers’ four-step strategy begins with reflecting (“While you were learning the basics of
the plan, we wanted you to concentrate on a goal that felt attainable and inspiring”), then setting the
next goal (“Your new habits are starting to feel like second nature”), repeating until you get to your
ultimate goal, and celebrating along the way by planning how you’ll reward yourself for each
milestone achieved. The strategy delineates some habits that help you lose weight and reminds us
that some habits don’t. Successful members ask for help, learn from experience, manage their
environment, manage their thoughts and feelings, prepare themselves to succeed, monitor
themselves, and take care of themselves. (Oh, and they attend meetings faithfully.)
Substitute “read better” for “lose weight,” and you’ve got a winning strategy for helping our adult
literacy learners succeed.
I was elated at that one-week weigh in. Did I expect to lose that much every week? Of course not.
If you do the math, you’ll see that it took five more weeks to lose 1.4 pounds. I even gained 1.2
pounds on my two weeks of vacation and celebrated the fact that I enjoyed lots of scrumptious
desserts and my mother’s home cooking and didn’t gain more than that. And, while the stickers and
applause are nice, the real reward for me comes from seeing (almost) every week that I’m
succeeding. The proof is in the scales, and in the scosh more room around the waist of my jeans.
Do you help your learner succeed – from the very first session? Do you plan for her to succeed – at every
session? Success starts and ends with setting small goals, “the ones that are just within sight.” Help
her learn the (reading) plan and the helpful habits, and she’ll be on the way to her own 5% goal! §
The Components of Reading: Comprehension
Sixth in a Series
In this series, we’ve examined four of the six
component skills that, together, are necessary
for deriving meaning from print: an
understanding of how speech sounds are
related to print, skill in identifying unknown
words, word knowledge and “world”
knowledge and fluency. In this issue, we turn
to active comprehension strategies.
has proved, however, that “when readers are
given cognitive strategy instruction, they make
significant gains on…comprehension”
(National Reading Panel, 2000). Meaningful
reading, then, including practice of important
comprehension strategies, should be part of
every lesson for all adult learners (McShane,
2005).
Just as reading is more than sounding out or
decoding words, reading comprehension is
more than simply understanding what is read.
Poor readers may not even be aware that they
have a comprehension problem; indeed, they
may view reading as merely getting the words
off the page. Without the underlying skills of
decoding and fluent reading at the word,
sentence and text levels, their comprehension
suffers. When this happens, they aren’t able to
use the information in the materials they read.
Eight effective instruction strategies have
been identified as most effective to help adult
learners construct meaning from text:
For good readers, the comprehension process
is automatic; we don’t have to think about
what we’re doing to make sense of text. We
have a purpose for reading. We make
connections between the text and what we
already know and use context clues to figure
out meanings of unknown vocabulary. We
“read between the lines.” We underline,
highlight, make notes, think about and
respond to the text.
Comprehension is defined as “the process of
simultaneously extracting and constructing
meaning through interaction and involvement
with written language” (Snow, 2002). In other
words, comprehending is constructing meaning –
actively and intentionally – by using both the
text and prior knowledge.
Poor readers probably don’t know what good
readers do and simply may not be aware of
the strategies, such as comprehension
monitoring and repair strategies, they could
use to achieve better understanding. Research
 Comprehension monitoring, including
 Thinking aloud
 Restating
 Asking questions
 Coding text
 Monitoring and repairing
 Graphic organizers
 Story structure
 Question answering
 Question generating
 Summarization
 Multiple-strategies instruction
 Cooperative learning
Tutors should teach these strategies explicitly,
explaining what to do, and how and when to
apply them. Teach strategies one at a time,
first modeling them for the learner by
thinking aloud as you read, and providing
plenty of opportunities for guided practice to
ensure that learners can use them
independently. The goals are, first, to help the
learner become proficient and comfortable
with strategies so she can use them outside of
the tutoring session and, second, to help her
use the right strategy at the right time.
In upcoming issues, we’ll discuss each of
these strategies. For now, see the next pages
for more on comprehension monitoring. §
Tutor Tips
Strategy of the Quarter: Teaching Comprehension-Monitoring Strategies
This sample lesson, from Applying Research in Reading Instruction for Adults: First Steps for Teachers,
outlines the procedure for introducing two simple strategies that may be taught together: stopping
and restating and coding texts.
Goal:
 Improve self-monitoring of comprehension.
Materials:
 Slightly difficult nonfiction text related to the learner’s goals and interests. Because the focus
is on building awareness of comprehension and comprehension problems, the text may need to
be above the learner’s independent reading level so she will encounter problems.
 The thinking processes apply broadly to different materials. Text sources for this activity
include popular newspapers and magazines, GED and pre-GED workbooks and highinterest/low-level materials from commercial adult education publishers.
Directions:
1. Introduce the strategies by explaining how they work and why they’re useful.
Example: Sometimes when we’re reading silently we stop paying attention or we just read
the words without thinking about them and we end up missing out on what the reading is all
about. I’m going to show you a couple of things you can do to stay focused and pay
attention to the meaning, so if you don’t understand something you’ll be aware of it and can
do something about it.
First, we’re going to practice stopping often to think about what we’ve read and to
restate it in our own words. Then we’re going to make quick notes when we learn something
new or when we have a question about something we’ve read.
2. Model these strategies by reading and thinking aloud.
 Demonstrate how to stop after every paragraph and restate what’s been read.
 Show how to use the following codes to mark the text to reflect your understanding or
comprehension problems.
?? = I don’t understand.
++ = This is important. (or) I don’t understand.
Be sure to demonstrate more than one kind of comprehension breakdown, perhaps an
unfamiliar word, an “I wonder what this means?” question and an example of more serious
confusion.
Sample test and strategy modeling:
(Tutor reads aloud in italics and thinks aloud in brackets. Coding is in bold print.)
Disease-causing germs often are transmitted by contaminated hands because people fail to take a few simple
precautions. ?? Germs may spread from hands to food, usually when food preparers don’t wash their hands
after sneezing, using the bathroom, changing a baby’s diaper, playing with a pet or caring for a sick person.
++ Germs are also transmitted when a cook handles raw, uncooked foods, like chicken, and then touches
raw fruits or salad vegetables, for instance. ++ Cooking the chicken kills the germs, but the vegetables
remain contaminated.
(Continued on next page.)
[Well, that was pretty clear. Diseases can be spread from hands to food if we don’t wash our
hands after coming in contact with germs. And that happens any time we go to the
bathroom, sneeze or change the baby. That’s interesting about the meat and vegetables. I
didn’t know that I had to worry about raw chicken. I wonder why we have to cook meat to
kill the germs but we can eat raw fruits and vegetables? I don’t really know what
“contaminated” and “precautions” mean, but it looks like “contaminated” means it has
germs on it. “Remain contaminated” sounds funny, but I think I get it. They’re still
contaminated? Maybe I can figure out precautions if I keep reading. I know what “caution”
means.]
Preventing contamination is simple: wash your hands frequently, with soap and warm water to kill germs.
(The CDC recommends washing vigorously with warm, soapy water for at least 20 seconds.) As another
precaution, remember to wash fruits and vegetables before eating. ??
[Now I’m confused. How do you wash the fruits and vegetables? You’re supposed to wash
your hands in warm water to kill germs, but the list on the page before said to keep hot
foods hot and cold foods cold. If I wash the salad vegetables in warm water they won’t be
cold anymore. Does that mean they’ll get more germs? And if I use cold water, does it kill
the germs? And what about soap? We don’t need soap to wash the veggies, do we?]
You could talk briefly about how these questions might be answered, what next steps should
be, etc. For instance, you might note that if the reader is unclear about something in the text,
one strategy is to read on to see if the topic or concepts is explained more fully further on.
Another is to talk to someone else about it (a part of this activity). However, the focus of
this activity is noticing the comprehension breakdown, so you wouldn’t want to get too far
“off track.” Strategies for solving problems should be introduced in other lessons.
3. Assign or hand out a reading selection to the learner, and ask her to practice stopping after
each paragraph, restating (silently) and using codes to mark the text. If the selection is in a
textbook and you don’t want her to write in them, she could use small adhesive notes for
coding.
4. Ask the learner to discuss what she learned from the article and to share her experience with
the strategies. She should talk about her problems and confusions and whether/how she
resolved them. (She might also read and think aloud with you; perhaps taking turns with
different paragraphs, reading and restating.)
5. Note the problems and solutions she shares and use this information in planning for next
steps. Is she using the strategies correctly? Were the reading selections too difficult or too
easy? What kinds of problems did she have? Were there lots of vocabulary problems, for
instance?
Working with beginners:
For beginning or struggling readers, you might need to teach one strategy at a time. For instance,
you could just teach your learner to stop and restate. Another option is to stop more frequently,
after every sentence instead of every paragraph. And of course, regardless of what kind of text you
use to introduce and model a strategy, the learner should use material at an appropriate level for
practice. You should also be aware that weaker readers working with simpler texts may have
comprehension problems unlike the fairly sophisticated ones modeled above. When they think
aloud about what they’ve read you might discover they have the wrong idea about what some
words mean – even when they think they’ve understood.
For more comprehension strategy instruction activities, check out the books, audio and video tapes in our library!
YWCA Adult Literacy & Learning FY12 Program Goals
As you are preparing your first quarterly progress reports of the year, it may help to
remember that goal setting is central to the mission of YWCA Adult Literacy & Learning.
Our program goal is to increase adults’ reading, writing, speaking and listening skills
to a level that will enable them to achieve their personal goals and
prepare them for further education, training and employment.





Our learner outcomes are:
Remain in the program until they have completed their personal educational goal
and/or for six months or 48 hours of instruction
Achieve at least one short-term personal learning goal and demonstrate progress
toward achieving their long-term goal
Demonstrate improved reading, writing, speaking, listening, or math skills
Improve comprehension scores by one grade level equivalent
Possess a library card and use public library services
In the Library
Comic Strip Math
Reviewed by tutor Becky Price
Most of our adult learners see learning math as being hard. In perusing the many books we as tutors
have access to, I ran across a book in which my adult learner is able to learn math concepts in a fun
way. This book, Comic Strip Math, teaches students multiplication, division, time, money, fractions
and more! This has been a great way to make math less of a threat an more something to look
forward to! I would highly recommend it for those students (and those of us tutors) who cringe
when they even hear the word “math.” Check it out!
English on a Roll
Reviewed by tutor Jena Hintz
After using three exercises from English on a Roll over a period of four months with my adult ESL
learner, I would recommend this resource for highly visual learners, any learner struggling with
grammar or learning new concepts in grammar. The book and exercises break down basic English
grammar concepts into very simple chunks of information. The parts of speech are written in
matching colors on cubes that can be manipulated to help the student form phrases, clauses and
sentences.
I used “teach the concepts” and “written exercises” from two review lessons and one lesson with
some new information. My learner had struggled with retaining some concepts of grammar, such as
prepositions, and the exercises really helped her. She seemed to pick up on new grammar faster and
retain more of the reviewed grammar. Because she could move the cubes instead of doing mental
manipulation, she could form sentences easier. She seemed to achieve success faster, thereby fueling
more success. This book may have been a preferable way to teach and review grammar in the case
of this learner.
YWCA Adult Literacy
Upcoming Events
and Learning
September is Library Card Sign-up Month. It’s also National Literacy Month!
 “Creative Comprehension Strategies” Tutor Workshop
Tuesday, September 13, 5:00 – 8:00 p.m. at Pekin Public Library (note time and location change);
repeated Thursday, September 15, 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon at the YWCA
 Tutor and Adult Learner GED Workshop Series
“Using the GED Calculator” Tues., Sep. 13, 6:30 – 8:00; repeated Thurs., Sep. 15, 3:30 – 5:00
“Using the GED Math Grids” Tues., Sep. 20, 6:30 – 8:00; repeated Thurs., Sep. 22, 3:30 – 5:00
“Scoring the GED Essay” Tues., Oct. 11, 6:30 – 8:00; repeated Thurs., Oct. 13, 3:30 – 5:00
 Pekin Public Library’s Cardholder Appreciation Night
Thursday, September 22, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. at Mineral Springs Park
 Volunteer Appreciation Night at Peoria Rivermen Hockey
Friday, September 30 – Deadline to order additional tickets for family and friends
Sunday, October 9, 5:00 p.m. – Game in Carver Arena, Peoria

“Week Without Violence” program by Center for Prevention of Abuse/House of Hope
Tuesday, October 25; 7:00 p.m. (time tentative)
 “Pekin Reads” author Peter Brown program and book signing
Thursday, October 27, 6:30 p.m. at Pekin Public Library
YWCA Adult Literacy & Learning
315 Buena Vista Ave.
Pekin IL 61554
Pam Ritter, Director
Susan Messman, Assistant
Wish List
Gift cards to area stores & restaurants
“Forever” stamps
Blank CD-R and DVD-R disks
Ice cream scoops, jars of toppings
Bottled water, hard candy
Special Needs, Math & ESL tutors!
This project was made possible by a grant awarded by the Illinois State Library (ISL),
a division of the Office of Secretary of State, using state funds designated for literacy.