Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Bruce W Sims]

Dear Folks:

For people who are not familiar with SRA Reading Labs I am including a link:

http://www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk/sra/rl_index.html

These programs are used to intervene with reading and comprehension issues as well as providing a guided approach to the student's progress to ever more sophisticated material. The kits may start as young as 5y/o and progress to 15 or 16 y/o. I believe there is also a protocol for using them remedially with adults. They have also expanded to include similar kits for Math and Science.

I am more than a little familiar with these but have never used them with an ESL population. Thoughts?

Best Wishes,

Bruce

[thegadfly]

My school uses them regularly as supplemental or self-study material, or else as homework assignments, in addition to the normal texts we use for the classes. Shrink to 96%, double-side some B4, and you have the little fold-out booklets to pass out to the students...of course, the SRA kits we have are 20 years old or so, and look more like the kits I used when *I* was in grade school than the slick productions you linked to...but yes, SRA kits can be a useful resource/text when teaching ESL, at least in my own experience.

[Bruce W Sims]

Thanks for your thoughts.

I'm guessing that the school where you work already had this material in place when you started, yes? Had they not been using it, how open might they have been to adopting this? From what I read in these various posts there seems to be some emphasis on making classes interesting and entertaining. I am wondering how accepting a school might be about accepting the use of a resource more along scholastic lines. Thoughts?

Best Wishes,

Bruce

[thegadfly]

Yes, the materials were already here when I got here -- the school resource library here has hundreds of books, perhaps even into the over-1k range...I haven't counted.

If I remember correctly, though, the SRA kits are pretty pricey nowadays, which may preclude convincing a school to begin using them. I think a whole boxed set was $3,000 USD last time I checked, though when I tried to get the prices from your link, I couldn't easily find them to see if I were misremembering the price....

[Bruce W Sims]

[Bruce W Sims]

BTW: are the skill levels of the Korean students comparable to the ranges covered by a given lab? I have seen the 2b lab on E-BAY for a couple-hundred USD. Its intended to cover grades 2.5 to 8. Would the 3rd grade material of the lab be comparable to where Korean 3rd graders would be with their language skills? Thoughts?

Best Wishes,

Bruce

[thegadfly]

[Bruce W Sims]

I was smiling as I read your post thinking how neatly Public Schooling pidgeon-holes students into neat little cubbies. There must be some fundamental shift in emphasis that occurs in that time-frame you mentioned, since the adults who come for instruction, later in life, don't seem to have moved along.

Have you crossed paths with the adult Language population much? Do you have a sense for where they would fall in the SRA progression. The sense that I get is that even though the labs go to 12th grade, adults would still be pretty hard pressed to handle that. Yes? No? Is this where teachers shift to something more Populist such as "Side-by-Side?Thoughts?

Best Wishes,

Bruce