Tips For Teaching Reading

Below are just a few tips to teach reading. More information can be found in the Tutor Handbook that you received during the two day Tutor Training Workshop. If you have any questions you can contact the Adult Literacy Program Coordinator.

Teaching Reading

  • Remember to consider your learner's interests and goals when planning any kind of lesson and when choosing teaching materials

  • Help build your learner's background information by reading and discussing interesting news and articles.

  • If you learner has children, encourage him/her to read to them. Discuss the importance of letting children see their parents reading.

  • Model what good readers do. (We don't complete worksheets. We do talk about books and other things we have read!)

  • Encourage silent reading.

  • Spend time with our resources and become an expert on books at your learner's level.

  • Talk about the strategies that good readers use; drawing conclusions, finding the main idea, reading for specific information, sequencing material, making predictions, understanding text organization, summarizing.

  • Encourage reading outside of the lessons.

  • Make use of "manipulative letters"; these could be magnetic letters like the ones that might be on your fridge, or "Scrabble" letter tiles, or ones you make yourself with a pen and card stock.

  • Include Word Recognition, Vocabulary Instruction, Fluency Practice and Comprehension Strategies in every lesson.