Literacy Basics - Community Literacy of Ontario

The Training Plan

Once you have determined that your program is the right place for a particular student to be, you need to begin working on developing a training plan. This document will help you and the student make the connection between his or her goals, current skills and what he or she will need to accomplish in order to achieve those goals. Remember, however, that training plans must be flexible and change to accommodate bumps and turns along the road towards achieving learning goals. Training plans should be reviewed at regular intervals to keep the information current and reflect any changes in the student’s goals, potential demonstrations and skills achievements.

Laubach Literacy Ontario’s Entry to Exit (Paul, 2000) describes a training plan as a document that:

• Outlines the current abilities of the student
• Outlines the goals of the student
• Outlines the skills the student will need to acquire on the way to achieving those goals
• Provides other pertinent information that may impact upon the student’s learning
• Provides a strategy or blueprint for how the student can reach his or her stated goals

According to the LBS Guidelines, training plans should:

• Be written in LBS learning outcomes language and use LBS levels as skills reference points
• Relate learners’ entry skills to the skills they need in order to be able to demonstrate achievement of short-term goals
• Detail the training to be provided that will enable learners to achieve their short-term goals
• Identify demonstration activities that will show learners and instructors that learners can apply new skills to real-life situations
• Indicate dates and establish time lines
• Connect learners to the next steps towards their goals (for more on next steps and transition planning, refer to Exit and Follow-Up

There is no one “right” way to create a training plan. While they must meet MTCU’s requirements, it is up to each literacy agency to determine a format that best suits their needs. Computers definitely come in handy when developing and updating training plans! Whatever the choice of format, however, each training plan must contain these common elements:

• Personal information: name, address, telephone number, background information that relates to the stated goal
• Short-term goal: what the learner will accomplish by the end of the time period identified in the training plan
• Long-term goal: the learner’s ultimate goal which may be achieved while attending the current program or at a further point in time
• Current skill level: the LBS skills identified at initial assessment
• Goal requirements: the LBS skills the learner will need to achieve his or her stated short-term goal
• Demonstrations: how the learner will demonstrate that he or she has achieved the stated short-term goal
• Timeline: how long it will take the learner to achieve the stated short-term goal along with the number of hours he or she will attend each week
• Next steps: where the learner will go after achieving the stated short-term goal
• Transition plan: how the learner will move on to the next step
• Signatures: the learner and a representative from the literacy program should both indicate that they understand and agree with the training plan

It is important to remember that training plans belong to learners. They should be able to understand them and be able to explain them to someone else. They should be able to share them with staff at other literacy or training programs or at other agencies. Therefore, you might want to give learners the original training plans but keep a copy in their files.

top of page

Questions for Reflection

1. How do you ensure that the results of a goal-directed assessment are reflected in a student’s training plan?
2. How do you ensure that the training plan becomes an important part of the learner’s overall curriculum?
3. How do you make the information on training plans clear and relevant to learners, especially those with low literacy skills?

top of page

Designed and hosted by in collaboration with CLO