Adult Learning Activities | Reading competency and Fluency

Many of the teachers I speak with tell me they want more short reading activities that relate to thematic units. Teachers want to develop reading competency as well as fluency as a part of speaking and listening proficiency. In this blog, I discuss online resources and easily accessible print readings, like the newspaper, as well as activities that can help develop competency and proficiencies in ABE and ESL classrooms. I also located a free online training available to help you develop how you integrate reading lessons in the classroom.

The first two resources were recommended in the Adult Basic Education and Literacy Journal's Spring 2007 volume.

The Adult Learning Activities | California Distance Learning Project offers short stories related an array of thematic topics: money, health and safety, housing, science and technology, working, law and government, family, housing, services, going places, nature, and school. You can play an audio of the story, so students can listen as they read. A few stories also have video.

After entering a thematic topic, you are provided with a list of story titles. These stories are like brief news articles written at about a 4-6th grade level. You can give students the basic story or the full story. You are also given a link to activities to build vocabulary. The activities are all online, but they will give you ideas to develop into a lesson for the whole class if you do not want to/or can not use the website with each student.

You may also want to try the AwsomeStories site. This site is very colorful and has links to different story channels such as Click2Flicks, Click2Disasters, and LawBuzz, which has won a Golden Web award.

The stories can help integrate information on civics and American history as well as health and other subjects into your curriculum. I like the way they graphically present options for selecting stories and the chapter divisions. Although this format also makes it more convenient for students to use the site online than for you the teacher to print the stories and distribute. Unfortunately, not every story as a feature for listening to the story, and there are few graphics. However, words are underlined and link to photos of people or sites with more information on the person, place, or thing.


Keep in mind that the newspaper is a great resource that is often overlooked and can be applied to lessons for English as a Second Language Learners. A great place to access news stories at level for your students is at NewsForYou! This site stays current, so students can read and listen level versions of the current top news stories. You can also subscribe to get paper versions sent to your school. Using these readings should help you launch into W questions (Who, What, Where, When) or Yes/No questions that can develop a sense of grammar structure as well as help launch into critical discussions of current events.

If you want to develop how you include newspapers in your ABE, GED, or ESL classroom, then you may want to take this professional development course offered by Verizon's education network, Thinktivity.

News articles and topic related stories, like those on CDPL, may be a good way to build content familiarity and vocabulary before transitioning into role playing activities. Role playing may be particularly useful for the ESL learner. At this site for ESL speaking activities, you will find various role playing activities and assessment ideas. They also offer an oral test and rubric. You will also find some role playing activities and other resources at the ESL-galaxy site.

One neat site is the English Express: A Website for adult learners. Here, students can select the level of their content. You can print stories as well as listen as you read along. they also have word games, readers stories, and a link to things for teachers and tutors.

My favorite site so far is the Reading Skills for Today's Adults on the Marshall Education website. This site offers a short, printer-friendly reading that students can listen to. The print out has the lines number with the word count to help students keep track of their correct words per minute score (WCPM). You can also access dictation exercises, which are often a shortening version of the reading. The dictation is also leveled, so students can work at the level most appropriate it to their listening and speaking skills.

I think timed oral reading samples are a good way of developing and measuring fluency. If you have students do timed readings, be sure you are also helping them to gauge how well they are reading the words accurately.

I helped a teacher with this type of activity when I substituted for her. I noticed that students were able to easily recognize some words they were mispronouncing, like forecaster and throughout. Other words, they were not really aware they were saying incorrectly, such as saying means instead of meant or say instead of says.

You can ask some students who are more fluent listen to others, which may help develop mentoring skills and a sense of class community. You could also utilize tutors to help monitor student speaking if you can not make time to listen to each student at least once during the time set aside for the activity.

According to the National Institute for Literacy's Applying Research in Reading Instruction for Adults, the timed oral reading samples are a good option for measuring fluency. I am not sure how you are having students chart progress. I noticed Jackie's students like to make a note on their reading to indicate how much further into the text they can read with each attempt.

The NIFL suggests having them read three passages for one minute as rapidly as possible, having them count the words, and then computer the average words per minute for each of the three passages. Next, they count the number of errors in each and computer the average number of words read correctly per minute. For each reading, you have the words read per minute score (WPM) and the words read correctly per minute score (WCPM).

There are a lot of resources available for readings. More things are online. I prefer items we can print as well as those that offer the word count as well as the option to listen to the reading. If you can try some of these sites, please let others know what you think. If you know of other sites that can be used to develop reading competency as well as language fluency, then please post them.