Oregon Reading Initiative

About the Oregon Heron Reading Cohort 2006-2007
The curriculum project described here originated in the second year of the Oregon Reading Initiative Project sponsored by the Oregon Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development (CCWD) and supported by Oregon Professional Development System (OPDS) at the Western Center for Community College Development. A group of adult basic skills educators came together as the Heron Cohort to build upon work conducted in 2005-06 to enhance practitioner knowledge about research-based reading instruction. In the 2006-07 academic year, the cohort turned its focus to low-intermediate readers and sought to develop curriculum that incorporated research-based instructional practices within a contextualized approach to adult teaching and learning. Dr. Amy R. Trawick, a national facilitator from Equipped for the Future, (EFF), led this process.

Defining Contextualized Reading Instruction
The Heron Cohort interpreted contextualized reading instruction as providing explicit, scaffolded instruction in reading knowledge, skills, and strategies within a topic and/or task of interest to the students. Contextualized reading instruction of this sort enhances student learning because it requires almost immediate application of what is learned within a task. The task is not only motivating, but also complicated enough to require integration among a variety of sets of knowledge, skills, and strategies. The acts of negotiating between what is known (i.e., prior knowledge) and what is being learned, and solving problems on the way to accomplishing the reading task, allow students to construct their own understanding of how to apply new learning. When students have opportunities to apply new learning in a variety of contexts within the classroom, it builds their abilities to transfer what is learned to situations outside the classroom.

In order to facilitate the transfer of new learning, teachers must be transparent in their instruction. Teachers must support students in understanding the purpose of the new learning, how and when it can be applied, and how their understandings are developed. Therefore, explicit, scaffolded instruction is key to contextualized reading instruction.

Three strands of research guided the Heron Cohort’s work with contextualized reading instruction.

• Cognitive science research, which is the foundation of EFF's content standards and its approach to adult teaching and learning.
• Research in adult reading instruction, as described in Research-Based Principles for Adult Basic Education Reading Instruction (Kruidenier, 2002).
• EFF’s research in adult reading development undertaken in the construction of the RWU Performance Continuum.

Unit Development Process
To develop the units available on this website, participants in the Heron Cohort divided into working groups, either by community college basic skills program or by region. The groups used the following process to develop their units:

1. Each working group drafted a unit, with these key elements included:
1. Class Goal. The Class Goal was written as a brief statement of a meaningful activity that motivated instruction. The Class Goal involved students in reading a variety of kinds of texts in order to accomplish an end product: a decision, a piece of writing, a brochure, or a plan of action. This Class Goal became the organizing theme for the unit, giving purpose to the explicit, scaffolded reading instruction incorporated into the unit.
2. Reading Material. A list of specific texts or types of texts that adult learners might read to accomplish the Class Goal. Attention was given to selecting, or helping learners to select, material at accessible readability levels.
3. Use of the EFF Content Standard “Read With Understanding” Each unit included a description of how to support students in following the reading process described by the standard. This content standard was developed by EFF to describe the problem-solving process adults use in accomplishing reading tasks related to their roles as family members, community members, and workers.
4. Teaching and learning objectives related to reading. Each unit focused on developing specific sets of underlying reading knowledge, skills, and/or strategies. These objectives were adapted from those found in the EFF Read With Understanding Curriculum Framework, (available through the Center for Literacy Studies).
5. Instructional plans. Each unit provided an instructional guide outlining explicit, scaffolded instruction in, and corresponding assessment of, key reading knowledge, skills, and/or strategies.
2. The EFF National Facilitator provided comprehensive feedback on each unit, utilizing an evaluation rubric.
3. Working groups revised their units based on the feedback and, where possible, piloted the unit with students and made further revisions.
4. The EFF National Facilitator provided a final review, and working groups edited as needed.
5. The Oregon Professional Development System staff edited the units and put them inconsistent format for posting to the web.

Tools
Working Groups used and/or adapted the following common set of tools in developing their units:

Planning Tools

• EFF Role Maps
• EFF Content Standard Read With Understanding

Student Handouts

• EFF Content Standard Read With Understanding (blackline master)
• RWU Diary
• RWU Guide

Introduction to the Units:
This chart provides key information about the eight units published for the Heron Cohort. Before reading each unit, it might be helpful to orient yourself to the format of the units

• Parenting
• Global Warming
• How to Be a Successful Student
• Forming Opinions
• Better Readers, Better Voters
• Setting Short Term Goals
• How to Become a Healthier You
• Working with Others

NOTE: Since a contextualized approach to teaching and learning is theorized to be most effective when students participate in the curriculum development, these units were intended to be jumping off places for both participants’ own classes and for classes led by other teachers reading the units. Readers of the units are expected to make adaptations that keep the activities tied to the interests and assessed reading needs of the adult learners.