© Leslie Shelton, Project Read
Development assistance Holly Fulghum and Joan Sheldon-Conan
Excellence for All: Focusing on Learning Strengths is a project which has explored the ways in which adult learners with low literacy skills learn most effectively. It features an instructional model which strengthens the emphasis on understanding a student’s learning styles by applying the Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Dr. Howard Gardner of Harvard University to basic skills instruction.
The philosophy of the project is that literacy students are highly capable learners whose learning strengths and intelligences are often underutilized or unrecognized by the methods used to teach reading and writing in the classroom. While the adult literacy field has turned its focus to learning disabilities, Project Read staff have preferred to focus on learning abilities. While it is important to recognize that a portion of our adult learners may have learning difficulties, we have chosen to develop teaching strategies and tutoring materials which identify learning strengths, encourage and empower the learner and tutor, and support creativity and diversity in literacy instruction. Instead of developing one prescripted methodology for every tutor to follow, we have chosen to create materials which help the learner understand and utilize their learning strengths so that they feel good about themselves and confident to continue their learning as a lifelong process.
The Result: A variety of easy to use instructional materials. Over the past seven years, staff members at Project Read- North County have designed and written a variety of instructional materials which are practical and easy to use while bringing the most recent research about learning into the hands of those most disempowered by our educational system. Some of the Honoring Diversity teaching strategy cards and background material is featured here for you to try out.
You can participate in a Work-in-Progess. Project Read Director, Leslie Shelton is currently completing a Literacy Leader Fellowship project to develop new multi-intelligent instructional materials for Adult Basic Skills classrooms. Join her research and development. New items will be added during September. Try out some of the ideas and send back your feedback forms today.
In 1989/90 we redesigned our tutor training process in order to bring the newest research about learning theory to adult literacy instruction. We added a variety of multi-intelligent activities which stimulated more tutor-created teaching materials, greater learner involvement in lessons, less reliance on textbooks, and increased retention. In 1990/91 we wrote Honoring Diversity: A Multidimensional Teaching Model for Adults, which included a book, set of 100 multisensory strategy cards, and audio tape for tutors, students, and adult educators. The “tool kit” to introduces tutors, teachers and students to the idea that all persons have at least eight intelligences, not one, and that each person uses a unique combination of these to learn. The cards present ways to identify the student’s preferred learning intelligences and suggest ideas to engage a mix of intelligences in basic skills lessons.
The Honoring Diversity kit was published by the California State Library Foundation in 1992. During the following year Project Read Director and Tutor/Student Coordinator conducted six regional staff development workshops in California, in 1993/94 disseminated the model nationally through pilot projects in three states, At the same time, three staff members develop a Training Guide of selected activities for tutor training, and wrote a parallel set of parent teaching cards for adult learners who are parents.
In 1995/96 Leslie Shelton selected as a Literacy Leader Fellow for the year to continue to develop new multisensory and multimedia materials for the classroom and adult literacy programs. Products will include: a new set of Teaching Strategy cards for the ABE classroom, an assessment process for identifying preferred intelligences,a slide show/video to introduce multi-intelligence theory using adult learners’ own ideas and words, a Training Guide for tutor training and teacher training, hands on instructional aides.
Staff members and authors:
Overview