Elmira College Alumna Featured on National Literacy Americorps Website for “Superstar” Nomination
November 17th, 2009
Megan Conners ’08, an AmeriCorps member with
Literacy AmeriCorps Palm Beach County, was recently named an
“America Learns Network Superstar” for
creating an adult literacy
teaching strategy that is now being replicated nationwide.
Megan received the national award for creating an innovative strategy to help adults learning English. She is currently serving as an adult literacy tutor with Glades Family Education Program in Belle Glade. The majority of the adults Megan tutors are Hispanic or Haitian farm workers who are just beginning to learn English. Conners works with her students to improve their conversational English while building their reading and writing skills.
Conners’ Hard Work Pays Off
Earlier this month, Conners’ students finished a chapter in their text book that covered the use of superlatives (words like older, largest, and smallest). “I was having trouble explaining the inconsistent rules that would tell a learner when to say ‘the most’ and when to put ‘-est’ on the end of an adjective,” Conners explains. “Even after working on these things for a full week, I did not feel like the superlatives were sticking in their minds.”
Conners developed an effective, engaging, easily-to-implement strategy that helped her students learn how and when to use superlatives. The strategy, called “Sentence Sequencing Cards,” involves engaging the learners in a series of pre-written question-and-answer based conversations. “Prepare to be amazed as they remember the questions and answers better than anything they saw in the text,” Conners said when describing her strategy.
View the video of Megan’s strategy at http://superstars.americalearns.net
teaching strategy that is now being replicated nationwide.
Megan received the national award for creating an innovative strategy to help adults learning English. She is currently serving as an adult literacy tutor with Glades Family Education Program in Belle Glade. The majority of the adults Megan tutors are Hispanic or Haitian farm workers who are just beginning to learn English. Conners works with her students to improve their conversational English while building their reading and writing skills.
Conners’ Hard Work Pays Off
Earlier this month, Conners’ students finished a chapter in their text book that covered the use of superlatives (words like older, largest, and smallest). “I was having trouble explaining the inconsistent rules that would tell a learner when to say ‘the most’ and when to put ‘-est’ on the end of an adjective,” Conners explains. “Even after working on these things for a full week, I did not feel like the superlatives were sticking in their minds.”
Conners developed an effective, engaging, easily-to-implement strategy that helped her students learn how and when to use superlatives. The strategy, called “Sentence Sequencing Cards,” involves engaging the learners in a series of pre-written question-and-answer based conversations. “Prepare to be amazed as they remember the questions and answers better than anything they saw in the text,” Conners said when describing her strategy.
View the video of Megan’s strategy at http://superstars.americalearns.net
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