Building Bridges to Literacy: The Success Story of Reading Skills for Today's Adults

This is a podcast episode about an open educational resource called Reading Skills for Today's Adults. It was created by Southwest Adult Basic Education in Minnesota and has gained recognition in the adult education field. The curriculum provides relevant reading materials for adult learners, covering topics like public health, workforce, and parenting. The program has expanded over the years, with new components added to meet higher standards in adult education. The project coordinator, Christine Kelly, led the revision and expansion, incorporating vocabulary, grammar, speaking and listening activities, comprehension questions, and writing exercises into the curriculum. The goal is to make the material more aligned with college and career readiness standards. The program also includes options for personal connection and opinion writing. The stories are organized by levels for easier use. Welcome to the second episode of DigitalATN's TechCast, a podcast about digital literacy and resilience in adult education. My name is Jose Adorno. I am the Statewide Digital Literacy Coordinator at Ed Advance and also the host of today's episode. I am accompanied with not one, but three special guests. They are joining me today to share the creation and adaptation of an open educational resource that has continued to build momentum and maintain its relevance in adult education, called The Reading Skills for Today's Adults. This project is from Southwest Adult Basic Education in Marshall, Minnesota, and this is their success story. Before we begin, for context to our listeners, an open educational resource, also known by the OER acronym, is a freely accessible, openly licensed material that can be used in a variety of educational purposes. Let me introduce you to our first guest, Pat Thomas, who was the Marshall Program Manager at Southwest Adult Basic Education and is currently enjoying her well-deserved retirement. She shared how the shutdown of a turkey plant led her to pioneer a team that laid out the foundation of the project. It's an honor and a privilege being a part of this podcast today. I hope through my story of the inception of Reading Skills for Today's Adults that you will remember, know if you have a good idea to do your due diligence with the idea while you can. You never know the future of the idea beyond yourself when entrusted to very capable folks. I started in the fall of 1999 and really had no experience in this field in the management area. But in 2003, the turkey plant shut down here in Marshall, a community of over 10,000 folks in southwestern Minnesota. This plant was a primary employer of the Somalian refugees. In Minnesota, we are forward-funded, receiving funding based on our previous year's number of hours created. We had money, but our Somalian customers were leaving to find work elsewhere. I asked the staff what idea did they have to create value without teaching. In the early 2000s, a staff who was using the middle school curriculum, Read Naturally, suggested using this proven research format to create a content adult relevant to enhance their reading comprehension. So the story of the inception of Reading Skills for Today's Adults began. The people who worked as a team to bring this curriculum to fruition were ill-equipped for the roles on paper. The writer of the curriculum had an early childhood education background. The person who put the stories on the web was a former music teacher. The editor of the stories and kept us organized was a former elementary teacher. The guy who found funding was three years new into this role as ADE director in grant writing. Our admin person, Barb, also became quite proficient at helping write the grants. Although at the time the team didn't have the necessary experience on paper, this is the team that worked on what many consider the staple of the program, the relevance of the topics and stories to adult learners. Let's listen to the steps they took when selecting the topics for their stories. What we did was we looked at what is context, what is information that new people to our country need, it would be helpful for them to know. And we pulled those texts from public health, that content from public health, from workforce to help people make people more work-ready. We pulled texts from school systems of as a parent, what you need to be more aware of as your role as a parent in this country. We pulled text libraries, what is the role of a library in this country? So what we did is we tried to give snippets of information that would be relevant to newcomers to this country. And yet as it was giving that content to them, it was also enhancing their reading skills and comprehension and fluency. This approach landed several partnerships and opportunities throughout the years. Pat shared the story on how the project began reaching national recognition. This program came to national attention when the writer of our curriculum found a webpage that had a picture of a goat and asked for permission to use it for a story. The person who she spoke to was the director of the Sonoma Family Literacy Program in California. She asked why this picture was being requested and then asked to speak to me. She was applying for a grant with the federal government to become the National Head Start Training Agency. She asked me if she could add our curriculum into the grant, which I gladly agreed to. Pat and I worked together for a while. Long and short was they became the training agency for Head Start for a period of at least 16 years. Dr. Philo Knapp asked us if we would participate in their trainings nationally, which again, I agreed gladly to this opportunity. Pat Thomas noticed that a revision was needed to adapt to the shift in education. And so the conversations began, marking the beginning of the expansion of the program. By 2016, I was very aware that our curriculum no longer met the higher standards held by adult education. During this time, I began asking Christine Kelly, a very competent Minnesota ABE person, to consider updating our material to these higher standards. Christine was reluctant to take on this new role. The very competent folks had very full plates. I continued to ask and ask and ask. And in the end of 2017, she caved. In 2018, she began this project. Meet Christine Kelly, currently the Atlas Literacy Coordinator in Minnesota, the lead of the second phase of the project, and our second guest in today's TechCast. Hi. I'm so excited to be here with the group that really spans the beginning of this project to the current day project. I am the Literacy Coordinator for Atlas and the adult system, the adult education system in Minnesota. And I got involved in this project at the end of 2017 after various requests, adamant requests from Pat to get involved, largely because we were seeing a big change in the field of adult education in terms of increased rigor, particularly around the college and career readiness standards. And I was teaching at the time, and I recognized that we could build more into what already was existing rather than create something brand new. There were already over 340 texts, which was the real value of this program, and taking those texts to expand by creating content that aligned to the standards. And I think that because when this started, there were so few adult-oriented texts, I think that was a key contribution of this. During our conversation, she explained how the text expanded its relevance from newcomers to the country to adults born and raised in the United States who needed to work on their literacy. This train of thought influenced the selection of components that were to expand and take part of the Reading Skills for Today's Adults project as we know today. So the key pieces that I knew I wanted to keep were the texts, and I wanted to keep the three speeds of fluency, which is modeled after the Read Naturally program, because that was the other key piece to this program, that students could listen to the text and follow it along at three different speeds to improve their accuracy rate and prosody. So those were the two pieces to keep. From there, I decided to think about how I could expand in the area of vocabulary, language conventions, grammar, that sort of thing, adding a speaking and listening component, because there's always been a writing component with Reading Skills for Today's Adults, but we also know that we want students to leverage their oral language skills often before they write, because they can build a lot of knowledge and they can talk through their ideas, which is a great support for writing, so I wanted to add that as well, along with comprehension questions that were created specifically to target certain college and career readiness standards. After selection of the components that will be developed in the revision and expansion of the project, Christine shares her approach she took when integrating these to the project structure. So it started with creating, kind of taking one story and creating an activity, or activities for each of these to have kind of a template. And so going back in, there were missed opportunities for academic vocabulary and other high-use vocabulary, so redefining the list of vocabulary words for each text, and then creating two vocabulary activities for students to engage in. Creating a language, some kind of an activity that involves grammar or spelling or punctuation or verb, subject-verb agreement, something that was contextualized to that particular text. And then creating speaking and listening questions about the text with sentence stems to help support students who are at the lower levels. And then creating multiple-choice questions that were intended, along with the college and career readiness standards, that were intended to increase in difficulty, so that students would build their thinking as they were answering questions about the text. And then writing. And one thing, the standards really ask students to write a lot of informational texts and argumentative texts. But we know as adult educators that our students need opportunities to connect personally. So I kept in, there were two writing options. There's one where students actually had to use evidence from the text, which is very aligned to the standards. But there's also an option that teachers can use where students can talk about their own experiences, their own connections, their own opinions about the subject, because it's really important that this work seems relevant to adults and that they connect to it. This template allowed Christine to lead the creation of supplemental material on the 340-plus available stories from Reading Skills for Today's Adults. However, there was one more area she wanted to work on, which was the alignment of the stories by levels, including Lexile and CCRS. Lex, tune in. I also went through and measured all of the texts with Lexile, which was interesting because it reordered a lot of the texts. At one point, I had 345 titles of text all cut out into strips on my dining room table where I physically was moving things around and recreating the levels. So instead of having eight levels, we ended up with 16 levels that are not aligned with grade levels as far as level 15 being 12th grade plus three. So that was a redefinition. And then creating some materials so that teachers could use their CASA scores or their TABE scores, and they could find a great place to start. There was a lot of updating that had to happen as well. One great example is Camp Snoopy doesn't exist anymore, the Mall of America. So, you know, updating that to the Nickelodeon universe and updating things like Kevin Garnett was playing basketball when Reading Skills for Today's Adults was created, but he's retired. So making those corrections. And then also text, and C can talk a little bit more about this when she talks, maybe haven't aged so well, and updating those texts to be more inclusive, culturally responsive. So it was a massive effort. And then I created the template, showed it to Pat, and then I recruited two highly experienced teachers who took on the task of creating these activities for all of the texts. And these two teachers, one both from the metro area, both with extensive ESL teaching experience and literacy teaching experience, really without the two of them, they took on this massive, massive task of creating these literally multiple-page supplements. Even though this involved in the creation of numerous supplemental material that developed the four language skills across the stories throughout the project, Christine wanted to continue free access of the resource with all the additional material that was being implemented. One thing I insisted on is that it remain free. This has been a free resource, and it's important because keeping it free was a nod to the fact that adult basic education is often under-resourced, and also a lot of teachers are part-time. They don't have extensive prep time. So having something that was pretty much created and freely available, and in addition, making all of these additional activities in Word documents so that teachers could just go in and adapt as they wanted, take what they wanted, add to it, delete what they didn't want, was really important. And also something that was unexpected but I ended up doing was re-recording a lot of the fluency recordings. So it's my voice in many cases that you will hear, and that was very deliberately done because, you know, in the time when this was originally recorded to now, we know more about adult fluency, and like everything else, it's evolved. And what I did for many of these was to re-record because we updated the text, but then also to be really mindful of how the first reading that students hear is about accuracy. It's slow, very clear, and the second reading starts to chunk together, like effective readers do, phrases, clauses, that kind of thing, so that students get that as a model. And then the third speed is really expression speed, you know, very normal, normal reading speed so that students can build up to that point, which was the original vision for the fluency part of it, but I think in terms of so much of this, you know, we just don't have a huge base of literacy research on adults. And it has grown, but we still have a lot of work to do. I would say, after Christine just finished her last comment, is that the important thing for folks to know here, there was no grand scheme of where this thing was going to go. There was no grand scheme. There was just people who did their due diligence while they had the opportunity to put their fingerprints on the thing. And what you have is people who don't quit in the three different stages, and they only try to perfect and make something better that they have the opportunity to do that with. So no grand scheme, just awesome people who move this thing forward to the next level. I would agree with that, and people who say yes. I mean, we would have never dreamed that the reading skills for today's adults could turn into something where teachers around the country were creating, you know, digital pieces for it. But the idea came across, and Steve was like, yes, yes. And so I think also just people saying yes and, you know, willing to take risks. And I've said it before, and Pat and I have talked about this, that you might not have a plan or fully understand what you need to do, but if there's a need, creating a response, some response is better than not doing anything. You learn a lot, and hopefully that response will be refined as time goes on. But, you know, from the first stage now moving through, not knowing what you're doing, but saying we're going to respond regardless because this is a need. I think that's really key. And then you fall on your face and you create things that you're like, wow, this really stinks. This isn't going to work at all. And then you move forward, but you just keep saying yes. I think part of the ability to hook up with the National Head Start Family Literacy Training Agency made a huge impact because we became known at the federal level at that stage. But I am totally impressed with how everyone has taken and moved this forward and extremely pleased with C's role as she has taken it to way different levels. Draw our conversation into the third and current phase of the project. Pat and Christine shared how proud they were of both the preservation of what was already done in the project and the direction the project took under the tutelage of C. Moore Lesky, the Marshall Program Manager at Southwest Adult Basic Education after Pat Thomas retired. C is also our third guest in today's tech class. Hi. Thanks for having me. I came into the picture about 2018 when Pat decided to be a quitter and retire. But I kind of feel like a fraud because all these nice things are being said about me. But I just kind of took over the project because that was my place here. And with my English language and special education background, I felt like this was a really important piece of curriculum that needed to stay out there in the adult education world. With me having a special education background, I understand that when we're teaching students how to read, they're very child rudimentary, just like, where is bot? Bot's in the box. Our adults are not going to be able to learn from that kind of curriculum. And so when Pat showed me all the work that they've done, I really wanted to make sure that we carried on that legacy and all that hard work that they built. And also because she promised me she'd come back and kick me in the behind if I didn't. So I wanted to make sure that I continued that work. And when I met Jess Goumez from Credit Learning, previously Credit Learning, he's now with Ed Tech World. But he always calls the Reedsville State's adult curriculum the sourdough bread starter. And so he's been introducing us to people all over the country that have taken the curriculum and customized it and made it to fit their programs. And it's been really neat to see that. We've looked at the data of the website, and not only from all over the United States, but we get a lot of people from Europe and even Asia that use our curriculum. And I get a lot of inquiries, even from special ed teachers. And I totally feel, I totally understand it because it's high school special ed teachers who are teaching their students how to read still. And the curriculum they use that I use when I was teaching primary education, special education, didn't really work. And so it was really neat to be able to not only help adults, but in the K-12 system as well, too. Throughout collaborations across the country, she had opportunities to witness the impact of reading skills for today's adults on a variety of contexts. However, the demand and need of distance education was about to reach a record high as we move into 2020 with the pandemic. Let's listen to See's approach on implementing distance education throughout this time. And I wanted this to get out more and for people to use it. And so it wasn't previously distance learning approved. And COVID happened. And that's when I started looking at it about, hey, what can we do to make sure that our students are still getting credit for all the work they're doing? So we were able to get the curriculum distance learning approved so they can do it semi-online or they can do it in paper format. So in paper format, they would print out the passage. They would print out the supplements that were created. And then when they completed all that, they would turn into their teacher and we were able to get hours for that. The semi-online kind of goes back a little bit with Jeff Groom as he reached out to us with Crowded Learning. He created a cohort in that the teachers who joined the cohort wanted to learn how to use Google Form and Wakeledge and Quizlet. And so instead of just your kind of typical workshop where you learn about this, then you take it back and you do it on your own. He actually took our resource, the adult curriculum, and he asked for our permission first, which I said, go ahead. You know, as long as you don't make money off it, I'm totally fine with it. Because it goes back to what Christine and Pat had said about we wanted to make sure this was a free resource. So they took the supplemental part and with all the vocabulary, they put vocabulary words for each story onto Quizlet. And then with Google Form, they took the assessment portion off the supplement, created Google Forms off that, and then curated it onto Wakeledge for each story. And so if you check out our website on the left side there, you'll see a Wakeledge button. And you click that, it'll take you to the Wakeledge website, which will have the Quizlet, the Google Forms. It also will link back to our story. So if you are just on that, it'll link you back to our website. So that way, that's kind of a semi-online version in that the students can read the story online and then they can do some of those and complete some of the supplements on paper. Or they can actually type it on their computers as well, through an email to their teachers. But we wanted to make sure that this was accessible, as some of our students didn't have access to technologies such as internet or even chatting devices. And so this was accessible in either form to our students and also our teachers because some programs weren't able to give their students technology or give them internet. Kristen shares her experience with distance learning using reading skills for today's adults during the pandemic and how she has used the program both in the classroom and as professional development. I think for me, having taught through COVID and having to, you know, to move to online instruction, I found having much of that material so much easier to be able to just, you know, drop into a Google Classroom or, you know, put onto a slide or create some kind of other digital literacy activity. You know, I used Mentimeter with reading skills for today's adults. I used Flippity with some of the vocabulary activities. And it was really a great support. And I have done trainings, many workshops for states where I include it, as an example, along with things such as Common Lit, ReadWorks, New ZLA, as an example of something that you can use as is, or you can use it as a foundation and build out. I've shown teachers how to take one's reading skills for today's adult selection and accompanying activities, build it out, pre-reading activities, you know, more conversation, how to use digital tools, add text, add visuals, end up with some kind of a summative choice board of, you know, activities that students can do. And that's always been really fun. And I'm one of those people who, like Pat says, I don't care. I don't care who created the curriculum. It might even be me. And if I just don't want to use it, I'm not going to use it. But I consistently still use it. And there are things I would go back and do differently now, a little bit differently, you know, because I know more about the standards. I know more about a lot of things in the years since. But, again, it was a response and something that I still recommend and I still use and I'm still really excited about. Reading skills for today's adults' high level of adaptability has facilitated ready-to-use content to agencies across the country, as well as the integration across frameworks and other projects. This was only possible due to the resilience of these visionary women that took this project to create a path that paved the way for agencies across the country to address the barriers that limited adult learners and teachers during these times. Z shares the next enhancement to the project. So it's been, I really enjoyed working with the program. And anytime I get to work with Christine, I always tell her, anytime I get extra money, I'm like, hey, Christine, I think we could do this and do that. And so she and I still have constant communication because of this program. And I really appreciate that. And so right now we are in the midst of adding more answer keys to all the stories. Christine started, and so, like I said, every time we get money, we see what we can do to make it better. So right now we have some extra money. So we are going to be adding answer keys to every single story because that's probably one of the biggest inquiries that we receive a lot from our users is that, hey, can I have an answer key? Can I have an answer key? Because, you know, like Pat mentioned, our teachers don't have time to just look up stories. And maybe that's just me. But our teachers, our part-time teachers, even our full-time, they don't have a lot of prep time. They don't have a lot of time to look at what's going on. So if they have an answer key that they can just pull up and look at answers, we can make it easy for them. And I love that idea. So we'll see what else is in store. But right now we're working on those answer keys. And I'm sure that those inquiries that we receive daily will lead us to our next installment of additions to Reading Skills for Today's Help. Pat and Christine recall a few memorable moments as they have come to the realization on the project's reach today. I was going to say, as he was talking, you know, about what's next, just finding out things about Reading Skills for Today's Adults and being completely surprised. And it's happened to me a few times. Once when I was on a webinar that was presented by the GED testing service for prepping students, especially students who were pre-high school equivalency to transition to a high school equivalency level, and I'm attending the webinar, and they called out Reading Skills for Today's Adults as a resource for doing that and, you know, being able to respond in the chat. Oh, my gosh. You know, I coordinated the standards alignment and then, you know, being introduced, we have a celebrity on the webinar, which was really great. And that also happened to me with the STAR Project, Student Achievement in Reading, the National Adult Reading Initiative, where I was both on a webinar and then actually looking at materials and resources that they recommend, and there's Reading Skills for Today's Adults. And I think it just always makes me feel like I've been part of something that has just created real impact. And I think the most valuable piece of all is that teachers see value in it and teachers feel it's something they can take and just, you know, use immediately in instruction, which to me has always been the biggest compliment of anything when they feel it's just ready to go. And it helps them, it helps me to ease some of the burden and the pressure of prepping quality materials for students to have that. I feel like it's just been a real support to teachers, and I'm very proud of that. I would echo what Christine said. After we began working with Sonoma Family Literacy Program that became the Head Start training agency for a number of years, I listened to a webinar given by National Literacy Council, someone from out in D.C., and we were cited as a recommended resource. And I'm going, holy cow. Anyway, I was totally blown away the exposure our program or that this curriculum has had way beyond what I ever anticipated. I will also say a small part of some of the funding we got to help do the initial, part of it, I had gotten, our program was a part of a grant with the workforce system that we address reading comprehension for the region. And we were to give trainings and we were to provide materials to teachers. And I think adult education instructors, in my opinion, are a lot like farmers. They're very independent, and they will choose their own curriculum. They aren't going to necessarily, just because you get a curriculum free, that you're going to use it. So I came up with a way I got materials from every publisher in adult education, and we put it in the public library system so it could be moved around to any teacher who wanted it. And state people come down and do training, and we use the college system in networking to be able to bring people together regionally to be trained via the internet. And so I didn't spend any money. And I accomplished everything I was supposed to. So that money then was used to fuel paying for services for reading skills for today's adults. And that's where the phrase, work smarter, not harder, came into play. Absolutely, honey. That was the origin of that. There you go. Any advice you would give to other adult education professionals looking to incorporate OER into their programs? My advice, I will just go with what advice do I give educational professionals, is if you have a good idea, do your due diligence with it while you have your fingers on it. If you have no idea what someone else may be able to do with it. Advice I would give is to just, you know, if you're not sure where to start, use the resource states adults as a core. And then, you know, like Christine said, you know, you teach it, and maybe you go back and you need to tweak what you want to or add more or take away. And that's what I've kind of done, too. As I teach for our local college here, they have a program for students that didn't get accepted into college, and this is kind of their second chance. So I teach the reading class, and it's been so successful using Reading Skills Today's Adults. It's only a four-week program, but I'm able to raise some of those students' reading scores from one to two reading levels just using this program. And so I'll just use the base, and then I always build on it. And sometimes I find out that I have a big class, I need to take away some, and sometimes my classes are smaller, so I add more to it. So that's probably my advice is just to start with the basics and then add or take away as you need to. I would give two pieces of advice, one kind of specific to reading skills for today's adults. Don't underestimate that we have bells and whistles and the CCRS-aligned activities and the wakelets and everything. Don't underestimate your students' need for the fluency aspect of reading skills for today's adults and listening and having those models of fluent readings. Fluency is a real issue with a lot of learners, and it's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. It's not just for low-level readers. Thank you for joining us. If you have any questions at all, definitely reach out to us on our website. All those inquiries go straight to me. I will be hearing any inquiries or any questions or concerns. We always love compliments. Thanks for having us. Thank you, listeners, for tuning in to today's TechCast, a podcast about digital literacy and resilience and dedication brought to you by DigitalATN. Find additional information about reading skills for today's adults and other open educational resources by going to our website at www.digital.atdnct.org at www.digital.atdnct.org at www.digital.atdnct.org at www.digital.atdnct.org at www.digital.atdnct.org at www.digital.atdnct.org at www.digital.atdnct.org at www.digital.atdnct.org See you in our next episode.