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Links to Literacy is a short-term literacy intervention program designed to help children in homeless situations become more proficient at reading and writing.1 The model program, successfully implemented over the last two-and-a-half years at the SafePlace Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Survival Center in Austin, was jointly sponsored by the AmeriCorps for Community Engagement and Education (ACEE) project and the Texas Homeless Education Office (THEO). Funding was provided by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Assistance Program through the Region 10 Education Service Center.
Being highly mobile and educationally fragmented, students who are experiencing homelessness often fall behind in their studies and have difficulty getting the help they need to stay current. The Links to Literacy program, designed to facilitate literacy through directed tutoring and structured reading and writing activities, can help address the academic needs of homeless and transient students through after-school and shelter-based tutoring. Links to Literacy provides academic support and promotes positive engagement with literacy. While the program cannot bring children who are significantly behind up to grade level or undo academic failures, it can provide a link in the child’s literacy development. Tutors help children find personal meaning and success in reading and writing by building upon what the students already know.
The framework for implementing the program’s four lesson-plan components (tutor reads aloud, child reads, tutor-child word study, and child writes) as well as guidelines for new tutors are provided in Links to Literacy: A Handbook for Short-Term Literacy Intervention. The handbook, which is available on THEO’s website,2 also offers activities and additional resources to enable tutors to successfully engage students in literacy, bolster academic confidence by tailoring lessons to the child’s individual level, and teach literacy skills.
Because these children have lived through circumstances that have been stressful at best and very often traumatic, they are often behind in their academic skills and unsure of their abilities. Many children who reside at shelters have negative associations with books: for them, books represent the frustrations associated with school and can trigger feelings of inadequacy. Others are reluctant to take an interest because they know that books, like other possessions, are often lost during relocations. Such students must be engaged; they must be shown that books are great escapes, tell wonderful stories, and provide information on what interests them. Tutors are pivotal in this process, for it falls to them to make reading meaningful, enjoyable, and fun. As tutors gain experience in judging the child’s reading skill, they can tailor lessons to match the child’s ability.
Developing literacy skills is the most quantifiable goal of Links to Literacy. By reading and writing with the child, tutors identify whether the student needs help with vocabulary and comprehension, phonemic awareness, phonics, or reading fluency. Even if a child is working at or above grade level, tutors can help to maintain and improve the student’s abilities.
Equally important is determining each child’s instructional level, the level where the child can feel genuine success. Research has shown that a child who can read with 90% accuracy is working at an instructional level—this means that the child can read a passage smoothly with no more than one error in every ten words. At this level, a child feels successful but will still encounter some challenge that allows him to practice reading strategies. At this level a child is likely to experience genuine success. When accuracy falls below 90%, a child can quickly become frustrated and shut down.
Each Links to Literacy lesson plan includes four key components: the tutor reads aloud, the child reads, the tutor and child engage in word study, and the child writes. These components are based on the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and address the five key early reading skills highlighted in the No Child Left Behind Act:
- Phonemic awareness – ability to hear, identify, and play with individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words
- Phonics – relationship between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language
- Fluency – capacity to read text accurately and quickly
- Vocabulary – words needed to communicate effectively
- Comprehension – ability to understand what is read
In addition, each of the four components meets the primary goals of Links to Literacy:
- Engagement in reading – Reading aloud is a non-threatening way to engage children in print and literacy. Comprehension is a natural extension of reading aloud and is part of this lesson plan component. Children gain significant vocabulary knowledge through being read fiction and nonfiction. Being read to gives them the opportunity to participate in sophisticated book talk and vocabulary development and bolsters their feelings of academic success. Thus, the reading aloud section of the lesson becomes a key for engaging reluctant readers (i.e., finding books about their area of interest) and fostering vocabulary and comprehension development. Fluency and phonics are also addressed. Children must practice reading to become better readers.
- Successful learning experiences – Many struggling readers have insufficient understanding of how words work. Word study engages the child by using games and fun activities to introduce and develop word knowledge. Children feel empowered by their increased ability to recognize words as they read.
- Developing specific literacy skills – Tutors can use the student’s interests to explore concepts and develop on-level texts for reading. Students learn that literacy includes the ability to express one’s ideas in writing. A child’s writing is also a great informal assessment and helps the tutor evaluate a child’s literacy level.
A successful literacy program includes a staff position of tutor coordinator that will serve as a liaison, literacy trainer, coach, and group facilitator. This position requires strong interpersonal skills, experience teaching literacy, and experience working with children from diverse backgrounds. Because Links to Literacy depends on volunteer tutors, it is of the utmost importance that the tutor coordinations provide high quality training and resources as well as being readily available to tutors. Below is a partial list of a coordinator’s responsibilities to the tutors:
- Provide ongoing literacy training.
- Provide literacy lesson-plan ideas specific to a particular student.
- Create and maintain supplies for activities.
- Be available before, during, and after tutoring sessions to offer support.
- Watch lessons informally and give tutors positive feedback and suggestions.
- Schedule times to formally observe lessons and keep notes on each tutor’s progress.
- Facilitate group discussions so that tutors can learn from each other.
- If tutors are overwhelmed they are by what they have been asked to do, address their concerns through training and support.
- Encourage tutors and help them see their successes.
Serving as a liaison between Links to Literacy and the shelter, the tutor coordinator must keep the shelter staff informed about schedules, discipline issues, space, and any changes in the program.
Tutoring at homeless shelters is a demanding task. The program needs space, a reliable time to work, and the participation of the shelter staff support in the training and supervision of the tutors. Tutors must also be prepared to meet the challenges of teaching in shelters, which are typically crowded, noisy, and distracting. Some of this preparation will come from the training and guidance provided by the coordinator. It’s important, though, to choose people who can be successful literacy tutors.
Below is a list of tasks the tutor will perform and some of the skills needed.
- Tutors must adhere to the program schedule. Because Links to Literacy calls upon tutors to develop and execute high-quality literacy lessons, tutors must be prepared for and supported in this endeavor. This requires a time commitment of about six hours a week.
- Tutors must work within the Links to Literacy tutoring model. The model demands that tutor and student establish a relationship around literacy. To do this successfully, tutors must be fluent readers and writers, good listeners, and creative problem-solvers. Training and support will help tutors develop the tools needed to teach literacy, but it is a prerequisite that they be skilled at reading and writing. Because this model is highly individualized, it is essential that tutors listen to their students and then build on those interests and ideas. Some of these children will be reluctant readers, so tutors must be creative in finding ways to make literacy meaningful.
- Tutors will work with children in crisis situations. Working with people in crisis demands compassion, flexibility, and consistency. It also requires that tutors be flexible with their own definitions of a successful lesson. For some children, just listening to a book for ten minutes may be a victory.
- Tutors will work with children from very diverse backgrounds. Cultural sensitivity is required of all tutors. This includes, but is not limited to, race and ethnicity. Many of these students will come from socioeconomic classes that are quite different from that of their tutor. Sensitivity to these differences is necessary so as not to offend or undermine a child’s sense of self.
- Tutors will work in high-pressure situations. Tutors need to have or develop skills for coping with stress. It’s imperative that tutors understand that they can’t single-handedly solve the problems they encounter. Rather, they serve as a link to success.
- Tutors will work as a team and very closely with a coordinator. In order for paraprofessional tutors to provide high-quality literacy intervention, it is crucial that they make use of the support system provided. This means asking for and offering support whenever necessary. The coordinator will provide structured training and guidance, but sharing information and encouragement with peers is also critical for success. Tutors must remain open to suggestions from the coordinator and be willing to learn and grow as a literacy tutor.
As funding for non-profits and school districts alike becomes more challenging, it’s critical to think creatively and to leverage resources from multiple sources. We fully recognize that most shelters will not have the money to fund a tutor coordinator or to purchase a literacy library on their own. Creating a quality tutoring intervention program in the midst of diminishing resources is a challenge at best, but efforts to model the program on best practices will pay off in the end. By knowing some of the guiding principles for effective literacy intervention and by providing research-based tutoring strategies, shelters can begin to identify specific resources within their community that can support the creation of a quality tutoring program.
The Program at SafePlace, sponsored by ACEE and THEO, will provide resources to help you get a quality, volunteer-based tutoring program implemented at your facility or in your community. Amy Buczynski, the project’s Training Specialist and Tutor Coordinator, can visit your proposed location, meet with your staff, and help lay the groundwork for getting your own literacy intervention project started. These services are available at no cost to you. You may contact Amy at ajbu@mail.utexas.edu or by calling 512-232-7198.
Source:
www.utdanacenter.org/theo/toolkits.html
1 Implementation of a similar program in mathematics is planned for the summer of 2005.
2 www.utdanacenter.org/theo/toolkits.html
3 For the initial implementation of the program at SafePlace, Amy Buczynski—who wrote Links to Literacy: A Handbook for Short-Term Literacy Intervention, served as tutor coordinator.
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