The Criteria for Teaching Older People to Read and Write

State Mandated Literacy Criteria

• Each state has variations in the mandated criteria for literacy education for adults. This criteria is required for people in educational or organizational settings, and it is generally advised for tutors and volunteers who teach reading and writing. The State of Maine, for instance, requires adult educators to provide a comprehensive intake and individualized learning plan as well as a curriculum designed to meet key learning outcomes. Criteria across the states is usually similar, and the specific standards that govern adult literacy education for each state can be found on each state's government page.

Common "Best" Practices

• Regardless of in what state you are teaching, most educators can agree on a few best practices when it comes to teaching adults to read and write. Assessing adult literacy skills both before and after instruction using a standardized test, such as the Test for Adult Basic Education (TABE) or the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS) allows you to determine a starting place as well as a way to mark improvement in education. In addition, relating the lessons to real-life needs, such as voting, obtaining a driver's license, or finding employment, works better for adults than abstract lessons.

Reading Methods and Techniques

• Generally speaking, there is a prescribed pathway for the development of literacy whether for adults or children. Phonological awareness typically starts with a lesson followed by word analysis; sight recognition; spelling; oral reading, first for accuracy then for fluency; comprehension and writing. For beginning or basic readers, some methods begin with an image and carefully build off that image into using short words, sentences and paragraphs.

Writing Methods and Techniques

• While reading is a cohort of writing education, writing instruction has a slightly different prescription to reading instruction. Foremost, many adult learners are asked to report writing anxiety that hinders their ability to write and learn writing. Generally speaking, the basic path of writing instruction begins with parts of speech and basic sentence construction and builds up to complex sentence construction, clarity, coherence, paragraph construction, effective transitions and organization.