Tutor Building Skills with LEA Stories 4

There are multitudes of different ways to use LEA to build skills.

The preliterate or nonliterate learner (with a short LEA story) could:

  • Copy some words or letters into the learner's notebook.
  • Circle every "e" (or some other letter) in the story.
  • Underline every capital letter.

The beginning learner could:

  • Copy the story in the learner's notebook.
  • Make flash cards for words the learner is interested in remembering. (This is called the "sight word" technique and will be discussed in Session 5.)
  • Make new sentences out of an existing sentence.
  • Underline the words that she already knows. (This is a great way to assess your learner!)
  • Make as many words as possible by changing the first consonant sound in one of the words in the story. (If one of the words in the story was mail, you could teach hail, bail, sail, tail and other words that have the same sound and letter combination.) This will help increase spelling proficiency and pronunciation. (This teaching strategy is discussed in Session 5 as "word families".)
  • Say words that begin with the same constant blend. For example, Stacey was stuck while studying for her science class.
  • Circle all the adjectives or another part of speech that you have been working on.
  • Develop a list of words to learn to spell.
  • Reread the story several times to increase fluency.
  • Read the quote with emotion (boredom, sadness, excitement, anger etc.)
  • Select a prefix or suffix that has been learned and see where it could be joined to new words in the story. For example, seek out words that start with "un" and find other root words where "un" could be added such as "unnatural" or "uneducated." See Session 5 for more information.

4Suzanne Abrams et al., Teaching Adults: An ESL Resource Book. (Syracuse, New York: New Readers Press, 1996.) Used by permission.