The Center 4Life Learning, located at the United Methodist Church of Sun City Center, is a fun, nonaccredited adult education outreach program that serves the entire community. One does not need to be a member of the church to participate.
The Center 4Life Learning is offering a ‘Beginning Reading for Adults’ class this fall. The class will be offered free of charge. It is set to begin in October and will run through March 2024. This is a beginner reading class, where students literally learn to read. The goal of the class is to get the students to a point where they would be able to read to learn new things independently with minimal tutoring.
The ideal student is one who grew up in the United States but never learned to read or write. Moreover, they have never learned phonics or do not have confidence in the knowledge they have. As they have grown up in the United States, they will share a basic foundation of words to use for lessons.
Jan Caruthers, Ed.S. will be the instructor. She has a master’s degree in English and an educational specialist degree in reading. She was an elementary teacher for over 25 years with an emphasis on reading and writing with children ages 5-10. She also taught remedial reading at Hillsborough Community College to adults who had not attained a 10th grade reading level on the placement test.
The class will run two days per week for two hours per class.
According to Sue Holter, manager of Center 4Life Learning, “This will be a very small, uplifting class. The instructor will start at their point of need and build on it. Some adults are not confident in their ability to read new words because they either never learned all the letters and letter-combination sounds or have forgotten them. If so, we will use what they know to sound out words. They will also learn high frequency words that appear in all books. When they combine these high-frequency words, the beginning sounds of unknown words and their general life knowledge, they will be able to read.”
According to the National Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Department of Education, 23.4 percent of Hillsborough County residents perform at the lowest literacy level. As such, there is a need for adult literacy classes in Hillsborough County.
For more information, please call the Center 4Life Learning at 813-634-8607 or visit www.sccumc.com/4lifelearning.
