Developing Reading Skills for the Workplace: A Task for All Teachers

Reading Skills: From School to Workplace In 1991 the U.S. Secretary of Labor's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) was charged with reporting basic skills needed by workers. Reading was determined to be one of those skills. As such, students must develop reading skills that will enable them to continue learning after they leave the classroom. This article identifies reading skills needed in the twenty-first century workplace and presents techniques teachers may reinforce in their classrooms to help students master those skills. Developing Content-Related Vocabulary Whether reading in the educational or workplace setting, one needs to understand material read. A solid foundation in vocabulary promotes this understanding and is necessary for students to progress to advanced instruction. The following techniques foster vocabulary building as teachers integrate vocabulary instruction into their lessons. Developing Pre-Reading Skills Several techniques (Vacca & Vacca, 1999) help students determine what they already know about new words. Word exploration. The focus of this technique is to allow students to identify what they already know about a topic. Students are asked to freewrite for no more than five minutes about a teacher suggested topic. Mechanics is not graded-students simply write about what they know as it relates to the topic. Brainstorming. This technique is used often in classrooms to generate ideas. It may also be used to help students discover what they already know about a new topic or concept. Students create a list of words related to a topic. List-group-labeling. Students are asked to group and logically arrange a list of words created in the brainstorming session. Once these arrangements are determined, students label each group. Word sorting. Students are given index cards containing key words from the unit of study and asked to sort them into logical categories. Knowledge rating. Key words are presented in this technique in a survey format. Students analyze their knowledge of these words by rating their understanding of each word (e.g., can define, have seen/ heard, not familiar). Scanning. This technique is used to find specific information (Roe, Stoodt, & Burns, 1995). Students quickly glance over a text while searching for particular words or material. This skill is useful for specific tasks such as searching for words or names in a telephone book where the reader does not want to read each word listed but rather look for one specific word or name (Hurst, Wilson, Camp, & Cramer, 2002). Skimming. Students use this technique for a quick overview of fulltext material and as a warm-up approach to an actual reading event. Skimming focuses attention on words in specific text features of the section to be read such as subheadings, boldface, italics, illustrations, maps, charts, and lists of vocabulary words. At the same time it allows the reader to begin the process of understanding the overall content of the text. Developing Post-Reading Skills Vacca and Vacca (1999) and Gunning (2003) suggest strategies that can help students extend their vocabulary. Concept circles. After dividing a circle into four equal quadrants on the board, the teacher places words in the quadrants of the circle and asks students to identify the relationships between words placed in the sections. The teacher may also leave quadrants of the circle blank and instruct students to fill in the blank sections with words relating to those listed in the other quadrants. Word analogies. This strategy allows students to gain understanding of new words by relating them to ones they already know (Greenwood, 2004). Analogies may include: Part to whole-petal : flower :: _____ : body (arm) Person to situation-president : nation :: _____ : state (governor) Cause and effect-cast : movements :: ____ : vehicle (brake) Synonym-work : labor :: ____ : play (fun) Geography-Little Rock : Arkansas : : ____ : Missouri (Jefferson City) Temperature-dry : arid :: ____ : humid (wet) Learning Words Independently Students will not learn all the words they need to know in the classroom. …