Literacy Links

Adult Learner Transitions

Click on Over. . .

Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count.
This multiyear national initiative to help more community college students succeed is particularly concerned about student groups that traditionally have faced significant barriers to success, including students of color and low-income students. Achieving the Dream works on multiple fronts, including efforts at community colleges and in research, public engagement and public policy. It emphasizes the use of data to drive change. www.achievingthedream.org

Breaking Through Initiative: Helping Low Skilled Adults Enter and Succeed in College and Career.
A partnership of Jobs for the Future and The National Council for Workforce Education, the goal of this initiative to strengthen post-secondary outcomes for low-income adults by focusing on strategies that create more effective pathways into and through pre-college and degree-level programs. www.breakingthroughcc.org

Lumina Foundation for Education, Adult Learner Initiative.
Only one in six students fits the mold of the “typical” 18-year-old who enrolls at a residential campus, stays four years and graduates with a baccalaureate degree. Adult students (25 years of age and older) are becoming the new majority on campuses across the nation, and many of these students face language barriers and deficiencies in academic preparation. To succeed in school, these students need very different services -- services that Lumina Foundation and its partners are working to identify and test. www.luminafoundation.org/adult_learners/index.html

National College Transition Network
See Adult Transition and the National College Transition Network by Cynthia Zafft. Site was developed as a joint effort by the New England Literacy Resource Center and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation to provide an online resource for Adult Basic Education providers who wish to implement an effective college transition program in their community. www.collegetransition.org/

Posters Promote Postsecondary Opportunities
Downloadable posters on this site use colorful graphics to illustrate the advantages of postsecondary education and training, comparing education to income, unemployment, etc. The Postsecondary Education Opportunity site is hosted by the Mortensen Research Seminar on Public Policy. /www.postsecondary.org/ps/ps_02.asp

Make Beliefs Comix
This free site from author Bill Zimmerman can be used by educators to teach language, reading and writing skills, and for students in English-as-a-Second-Language programs to facilitate self-expression and storytelling. Parents and children can create stories together, print them to create comic books or email them to friends and family. www.makebeliefscomix.com/

Early Childhood Education: Dialogic Reading
The What Works Clearinghouse, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, recently released a report on the use of dialogic reading -- an interactive shared picture book reading practice designed to enhance young children’s language and literacy skills. During the shared reading practice, the adult and the child switch roles so that the child learns to become the storyteller with the assistance of the adult, who functions as an active listener and questioner. whatworks.ed.gov/InterventionReportLinks.asp?iid=271&tid=13