| Students for
Literacy
Frontier College “Students for Literacy” (SFL) volunteers at the
University of Winnipeg and University of Manitoba were back in action in
Winnipeg again this fall.
Eight volunteers completed Part One of a two-day “Tutor Training
Workshop”, led by Frontier College Manitoba Coordinator Susanne
Magyar-Chapiel and Alberta Coordinator Lisa Marie Bossert on October
24th. (Part Two — a follow-up training day is set for February 12th.)
The volunteers were trained in Frontier College’s “Student-Centered
Individualized Learning” (SCIL) method, and received handbooks to help
them in their tutoring.
Some volunteers are currently working with adult learners in the community, or
with inmates at the Remand Centre and Headingley.
Others have chosen to work with children this winter. Three groups of five
students are running after-school “reading circles” at three
different community centres in Winnipeg.
The U of W team runs a reading circle/homework club for some 20 children at the
Magnus Eliason Rec. Centre on Monday afternoons between 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
The children (as well as the volunteers) have portfolios or log books which
they use to keep track of the books they read each week, the literacy
activities they participate in (like Scrabble Jr), and their progress.
Two teams of students from the U of M run similar programs at the River Osborne
Community Centre and Lord Roberts Community Centre on Monday and Tuesday
afternoons.
“It’s a relatively simple program to run,” explains Susanne
Magyar-Chapiel, “because the volunteers bring library books to the
circles, and simply encourage the children to read to them or listen to them
read. It’s enormously helpful to children whose parents might not be able
to read to them at home.”
Both SFL groups will begin another round of volunteer recruiting in January.
Students interested in working at a reading circle or helping to organize and
fundraise for their campus programs should contact Susanne Magyar-Chapiel at
334-8700 for more information.
 |
Literacy in the field
It is through the dedication and determination of literacy instructors in
the field that the battle against low literacy is being won. Each issue we will
feature one of the successful programs that is making a difference.
Playgroup Partners, a Gimli family literacy program that began in Fall
1998, has been growing steadily each year. Twenty-six mothers and forty-two
children are registered, although, on average, eight to ten mothers and ten to
twenty-five children attend each Thursday morning in the basement of the Gimli
Lutheran church. Carol Goossen is the instructor.
Carol Goossen, M.A., also teaches two evenings a week at Arborg Adult Learning
Centre and co-ordinates the RWB dance program in Gimli. Previously, she worked
for ten years as a tutor/instructor at Foundations Learning Centre in Winnipeg.
The goals of Playgroup Partners are
- to raise parents’ awareness of their role as the child’s first
teacher
- to promote early childhood education by engaging children in theme-based
stories, songs, rhymes, crafts, etc.
- to provide opportunity for parent-child interaction that is enriching for
both
- to provide information and support to parents on parenting issues
- to develop and pilot a rural curriculum for a family literacy program.
Carol believes that the program is successfully engaging the families in early
childhood educational activities and promoting a healthy bond between mother
and child. She cited a mother who had just told her that her two-year old
daughter was playing with her doll on her lap, singing the songs and rhymes
that she had learned at playgroup.
Due to an exciting new partnership with Gimli Early/Middle Years School, the
program is now able to offer some parenting guidance to the mothers. The school
principal, Ms Donna Kormilo, and grade six teacher Mrs. Pam
Einaarson, both enthusiastic supporters of family literacy, have permitted
some students to attend the family literacy program and mind the children,
while the mothers attend a parenting information session. Under this
supervision, the children rotate through various stations: the craft table,
book centre, the puzzle centre and others.
This is the morning program:
10:00-10:30 snack and gathering time
10:30-10:50 circle time 10:50-11:00 story time, rhyme time
11:00-11:45 parenting information time
11:45-12:00 clean-up
The circle time, story and rhyme time, craft table, and book centre are all
developed around the same theme. If the theme is grandparents, for example,
then the songs, fingerplays, rhymes, stories, and crafts, and even the books,
will focus on grandparents, and, in keeping with a local perspective,
grandparents in a rural setting.
In a survey conducted in spring 1999, parents asked for more repetition of the
songs and rhymes so that they could really learn them. Accordingly, Carol
develops each theme within an eight-week curriculum, with regular repetition of
many of the songs.
Carol is well under way to achieving her fifth goal, the development and
piloting of a rural curriculum for a family literacy program. This project
should be completed by summer, 2000.
It is programs like Playgroup Partners in Gimli, under the dedicated
guidance of instructors like Carol Goosen, that really do make a
difference. |
