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Recent projects at Prospects have produced a number of good teaching, learning, and organizational resources. Please contact us if you wish to learn more about or purchase any of the resources described in this section.
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In partnership with the Edmonton Art Gallery, Prospects provided students from our writing workshops with an interesting opportunity to discover the world of art. They visited the art gallery to look at paintings and sculpture, and they wrote their opinions, thoughts and feelings about these works. The students' work is published in a book, blue ink in my pen: student writings about art which they launched at a public reading at the Edmonton Art Gallery.
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This was a two-year pilot project to examine the feasibility of using volunteer tutors to work with adults with developmental disabilities. Funded by the National Literacy Secretariat, the project saw twenty adults matched with volunteer tutors who worked together in a learning centre setting. Meeting Challenges, a publication distributed across Canada, describes the results of this project.
The Challenges project was integrated into Prospects with the
support of a Wild Rose Foundation grant. It continues with funding
from Alberta Advanced Education and Career Development.
An exciting new project is underway at Prospects. We are in the process of setting up a Provincial Centre for Family Literacy, the first of its kind in Canada! The Centre will run many of the programs currently run by Prospects, and will provide information, training, and resources to other literacy programs in the province.
Resources that were formerly distributed by F.L.A.G. (Family Literacy Action Group) are now available from Prospects Literacy Association and will soon be available from the brand new Centre for Family Literacy. Currently, you can order these items by contacting Prospects.
Note: This resource is now available online at the NALD website at:
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Several Prospects students who are developmentally challenged chose professions or jobs they wanted to learn more about. These adults "shadowed" and interviewed people in those jobs, then wrote about their experiences. These stories are published in a series of seven books: The Shadow Series. Titles in the series include Meeting Anne Murray, Making Mousse at the Mac, Des and the Dolphins, and Touchdown! . This project was funded by The Canadian Give the Gift of Literacy Foundation.
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Building on our success with the Job Shadow Books, we collaborated with Edmonton Recycling Society (ERS) for this project. Two developmentally disabled Prospects students who work at ERS authored a photo-story. They describe the challenges they face both in their work, and in developing reading and writing skills. The students presented their work, entitled The Challenges of Literacy and Employment, at a national conference, and one of them wrote an article for The Edmonton Journal. The project was funded by the National Literacy Secretariat.
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With National Literacy Secretariat funding, we coordinated the development of a database program specifically designed for use by volunteer tutoring programs. This software increases the efficiency of literacy organizations by tracking the contact information of literacy students, tutors, staff and other organizations. It prints up-to-date lists and labels, and it is used for matching and tracking student and tutor pairs. Other Lit-Link functions include the tracking of library and property items, to-do list creation, the tracking of callback data, mail merge and letter storage, literacy stats calculations, and much more. For more information about the Lit-Link Database, visit the OM Corporation Web site! |
Also funded by the National Literacy Secretariat, this project is a case study that looks at the effective management of a volunteer tutoring program. We focused on finding a balance between bringing new tutoring pairs into the program and supporting them well while they are in the program. We wrote up the results in Testing the Balance and distributed it to all literacy programs in the province.
Students were asking for help in math as well as reading and writing. With the support of a grant from Edmonton Community Foundation, we developed a program to train tutors to teach math. Math in Daily Life has proved popular with literacy programs across the country as well as in Alberta.
This pilot project in program evaluation was funded by the National Literacy Secretariat and was implemented in collaboration with three other Alberta literacy programs. The programs piloted two evaluation tools -The Adult Literacy Volunteer Tutor Program Evaluation Kit by Audrey Thomas, and The Progress Profile, a British tool which enables tutors and students to set goals together and assess student progress. A detailed 50 page report entitled A Pilot Project in Program Evaluation was written by Prospects executive director, Maureen Sanders.
A number of Prospects students, along with workshops coordinator Don Trembath, spent their summer visiting various sites of interest and attractions around Edmonton. They wrote about their experiences through peotry and story writing, and their work is compiled in a booklet entitled How We Spent Our Summer Holidays.
Resources
Available
(prices include postage and
packing)
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The Lit-Link Database (1997-1999)
Existing records can be imported into Lit-Link from
another database or spreadsheet. |
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How
We Spent Our Summer Holidays
(1997)
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$5.00 |
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Testing
the Balance (1996)
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$10.00 |
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blue
ink in my pen: student writings about
art (1995)
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$5.00 |
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The Challenges of Literacy and Employment (1995) by Darren Crawford and Angele
Hubert
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$10.00 |
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The
Shadow Series (1994-95) |
$7.00 Single |
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Math
in Daily Life (1994)
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$20.00 |
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A
Pilot Project in Program
Evaluation (1994)
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$10.00 |
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Meeting
Challenges (1991)
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$6.00 |
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Building Strong and Effective Community Partnerships
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$15 |
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Practical Guide for Family Literacy
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$15
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Guide
to Evaluation for Family Literacy
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$20
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Note: All three F.L.A.G. publications, plus a binder, are available for $49 plus $10 shipping. Please make cheques payable to Prospects Literacy Association.
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To order any of these
resources,
please contact Prospects with your request.
Home | Who are we? | Structure | Resources | Programs | What's new? | Links
Prospects Literacy Association
9913-108 Ave, EDMONTON, Alberta, T5H 1A5 CANADA
Phone: 780-421-7323 (421-READ) Fax:
780-421-7324
prospects@aaal.ab.ca
©1997-2000, OM Corporation
