BREAKOUT #1
LOCATION: CROSS TIMBERS 1
Teaching literacy-level adult ESL learners is uniquely rewarding, but without the right tools, it can feel like navigating without a map. This session gives you concrete goals, step-by-step processes, and practical activities to confidently guide your learners onto the road to literacy.
About This Session
Description
Do you work with an adult learner or a class of learners who are just beginning to read and write?
Tutoring literacy level adult ESL learners has unique rewards and challenges. There are very few textbooks aimed at this level, and it can be difficult to break down their learning goals into smaller, achievable steps.
This session will cover suggested goals, processes, and activities for helping an adult ESL learner get successfully started on the road to literacy.
What we'll cover:
In this workshop, put yourselves into the shoes of a new language learner, then uncover ways to make learning easy and accessible to learners who are at the very beginning of their literacy journey.
In this session, we will look at research-backed instructional practices for supporting adult emergent readers in a classroom setting, explore concrete hands-on literacy activities, and discuss ways to create a literacy classroom that is welcoming to brand-new students who are hungry to learn.
Topics & Focus
Primary Topic Area
Session will also cover:
Assigned by TCALL
Audience
Level
Case study?
Promotion?
Find definitions of topic areas, audiences, levels, and PD categories by clicking on any icon, or see them all on this page.
A note from the presenter:
No other info available at this time.
Handouts & Materials
No handouts or materials available at this time.
“Name of Session” – session presentation slides (PDF)
Name of Document – lesson sample (PDF)
Name of Document (PDF)
Name of Document – infographic (JPG)
Presenter
Andrea Echelberger
LESLLA
Andrea Echelberger has worked in the field of adult education as a classroom teacher and an instructional trainer for over 20 years, providing training and support for English language teachers on both a state and national level.
Andrea has worked extensively with refugee-background adult emergent readers, served as an EL Fellow and EL Specialist with the US State Department, and has developed a wide variety of workshops and classroom instructional materials for ABE teachers of all levels. She served for three years on the international board of LESLLA, an organization that focuses on adult emergent readers. Andrea’s favorite areas of research are universal design for classrooms, healing-centered classroom practices, and pronunciation instruction.
Breakout26 – ECHELBERGER
Page checked or updated: 6/10/2026
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