State Competency Levels for WA

ABE Reading & Writing
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Assessing Reading Skills

Can your student:

Writing is Fun!

Remember to consider your student’s interests and goals when planning any kind of lesson and when choosing teaching materials.
Help build your student’s background Information by reading and discussing interesting news articles.
If your student 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’ve read!)
Encourage silent reading.
Spend time in our library and become an expert on books at your student’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.
Many of the lesson ideas on this site 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 marking pen and card stock.
Include Word Recognition, Vocabulary Instruction, Fluency Practice and Comprehension Strategies in every lesson (Details).
We recommend the Language Experience Approach, as described in your training textbook, Teaching Adults: A Literacy Resource Book, pp. 45-50.

Struggling writers tend to focus on the mechanics of writing rather than the ideas they are trying to express. As the tutor, you need to initially focus on reading the student’s writing versus evaluating it. Later when the student is more fluent will be a better time to focus on writing conventions such as spelling and punctuation.
Many students are very reluctant to write anything, let alone a complete essay. Start small and provide lots of topic suggestions - see Beginning Writing.
When students write about a topic that they know and care about, their motivation and ownership increase.
Encourage your student to write frequently and regularly - see Journal Writing.
Have your student read his writing aloud to you, and give positive feedback. Use the Writer's Feedback Guide as a starting point.
If you need help teaching writing, Steck-Vaughn’s GED Essay has an excellent step-by-step process that students seem to really like

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