Families for Literacy at SF Bay Area Libraries

Books about bilingualism for kids

2010-06-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

Not all literacy learners are English language learners, of course, but some are. At Second Start in Oakland, our FFL program has a much higher percentage of English language learners and multilingual students than the program as a whole. Often, the children in these families grow up bilingual or multilingual, speaking the family language with the family but expected to speak English in the world outside the home.

The expectations of multilingualism on kids raises all kinds of issues: at school, in the home, with the family outside the home, in everyday life. Here, from the wonderful blog "Playing By the Book," is a list of children's books about multilingual children, multilingual families, children who have to learn English when their families move to America, and children who live in a non-English-speaking family in an English-speaking world.

This list is a compilation of suggestions from many people, not vetted by any single authority; you may have your own thoughts about some of these books, or think of others that should be on the list. Please comment!

Science and FFL

2010-05-17T11:56:00.000-07:00

For those interested in science concepts: from the files of the Ooey Gooey Science Lady: http://www.ooeygooey.com/mary/resources/

Any of the great books by author Janice VanCleave will promise a fantastic science adventure.

Sandy Yellenberg, from the Santa Clara County Office of Education, will always steer you to great fun with science – 453-6692

- Deborah Estreicher, San Jose

Mixing In Math

2010-05-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

Priya Mascarenhas (Santa Clara Reads) and I attended a workshop on utilizing math in library programs. Funded in part and supported by the National Science Foundation, the objective is to have children begin thinking about math concepts at a very early age, instead of fearing or despising math as a whole in their later educational years. The staff of "Mixing in Math" is very helpful and will find a way for you to incorporate math skills into programs you would never have thought possible. For example, before we went to a performance of "Cinderella," they advised that the families estimate foot sizes and then use rulers and actually make and compare measurements. The staff will e-mail you with suggestions for whatever program you have in mind. If you can take part in a workshop, Priya and I, wholly recommend that you do.

For Halloween, I followed the following advice with slight modifications:

Many Seeds - We read the book How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin. One of the older kids first rolled his eyes, thinking it was going to be a baby book, but he ended up in the middle of the group, really drawn in by the book. It wasn't pumpkin season, so I used fruits (apples, peppers, mango, papaya, honeydew, lemon, kiwi). With the kiwi we scooped the center and estimated. We did a lot of estimating. They came up with ways to group the seeds, and multiplied by the number of groups. They first made groups of a certain number, like 50, and then they made groups that looked like they had that number of seeds. The counting wasn’t exact except for apples and mangoes. (They were surprised that the mango had only one.) I had two of each fruit and they estimated whether the larger one would have more than the smaller. We also estimated how many seeds per fruit. I’d made a chart so they put the info onto the chart. They made a bar graph with the number of seeds per fruit. Some of them had never had some of the fruits – one had never tried honeydew, and he didn’t even know what it looked like. He loved it. They loved the program and fruit is a great incentive. They estimated, divided, counted, analyzed. At the end we talked about what type of math they did. They said dividing, multiplying, etc. I mentioned graphing. The first & second graders didn’t know what a bar graph is. The older kids taught the younger kids how to do it. They showed them the line at the top and how to do the column.

A while back, we had kids estimate how much two different pumpkins weighed. Lots of pumpkin math! Kids lifted things in the room, including one kid who lifted his sister.

For additional info: http://mixinginmath.terc.edu

Social Workers in the Library

2010-05-17T11:33:00.001-07:00

The San Jose Public Library has a cooperative venture with the National Association of Social Workers and San José State University’s School of Social Work – Social Workers in the Library. Through this venture, the Library presents "Social Worker in the Library" on the fourth Monday of every month from 6-8 p.m. Patrons can sign up for appointments for a free 20 minute consultation.

- Deborah Estreicher, San Jose

Parenting Coach

2010-05-17T11:17:00.000-07:00

For a wonderful speaker/parenting coach for your FFL programs:

Susan Stone Belton has appeared several times at FFL events, conducted programs throughout the San Jose Public Library system and was even invited to conduct an SJPL, library wide inservice. She is excellent, warm and straightforward. Parents/caregivers have found her style very conducive to participation.

- Deborah Estreicher, San Jose

The Poet-Tree

2010-05-11T14:07:00.000-07:00

Is April National Poetry Month because two famous poems mention it in the first line?* I don't know, but National Poetry Month is as good a theme as any for a Family Literacy Program ... and since I'm never one to pass up a pun, we created a "poet-tree," with every leaf a poem created by one of our students and/or their children:

Before we wrote the poems, we talked about different kinds of poetic language: rhyme (everybody contributed eagerly to this discussion); assonance (a hard concept!); meter and syllable count; and acrostic poems - I had written one on the board using my name, which seemed to delight the kids.

The parents, older siblings and I helped the little kids write their poems. They mostly wanted to write acrostic poems of their names. One older brother who loves both poetry and his little sister wrote an alphabet acrostic in her praise. The elementary age older brothers wrote lots of poems about King Kong playing ping pong. Some of the parents and older kids wrote very nice poems; the poetry-loving older brother wrote a real stunner.

For story time, there are about a zillion wonderful rhyming picture books out there; for no particular reason except that I like the rhythm and the illustrations, I chose Spike Lee's Please, Puppy, Please.

Design info: I got lots of great ideas on how to create a poet-tree from the pubyac yahoo group. I made our tree from a cardboard box that had held a flipchart pad: I opened the box completely and drew a tree on the inside. It can stand on its own when it's not pinned to the wall.

- Ann Daniels, Oakland FFL

*The April first lines are from The Canterbury Tales and The Waste Land - neither of which, as far as I can recall, mentions King Kong playing ping pong.

Holiday Book Event and Barnes & Noble

2009-12-01T12:06:00.000-08:00

Once again the good people at Barnes & Noble at Oakland's Jack London Square are generously hosting us for a holiday book-buying extravaganza!

I invite all FFL students who have come to two or more programs over the past calendar year. We meet in the children's book section, where I read aloud several of the books on display. Promptly at the appointed hour I give everyone a shopping budget from a purchase order. Then everyone shops!

Barnes & Noble provides us a 20% discount, goodies from their cafe, a staff person to answer questions and help our families find books, a book truck to stack purchases while people are shopping, and a dedicated register for our families.

Over time, I've developed several rules. (1) No latecomers: Once I've done the math to divide up the purchase order among those present, there is no money left, and that's that. (2) No outsiders: although anyone is welcome to bring friends, family members, etc. to regular programs, this is just for students and the children I give them books for. (3) Math lesson: people are expected to keep track of their own purchases, although I'll help them before they check out to make sure that they are within their budget. (4) Watch your own children!

Sadly, Barnes & Noble is closing its Oakland store at the end of this year. But if you have a store near you, you might consider asking them to host an event like this. I'm thinking of trying Borders next year.

Barack Obama bookmark

2009-04-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

I've created a new bookmark with a great quote I found of President Obama's. I'm distributing this to our families; and our branch library liked it so much I put them on the copyright and am giving them the template and copies to hand out, in thanks for the help they've given me over the years.

Feel free to download this and use it!

Scrapbooking family night

2009-02-11T11:05:00.000-08:00

We had a fun family night learning how to create scrapbook pages from favorite photos. And best of all - this program was led by one of our own learners who scrapbooks as a hobby!

We told families in advance (by flyer and in our phone calls) to bring their own photos - we also had some photos of them from previous family nights, just in case they forgot. I met several times with the learner/program leader to guide her in how to lead a class and to plan the program, decide on materials and review what we had on hand, and shop at our local Creative Reuse store for what we lacked. (I also did a small amount of shopping at Michael's at her direction.) Our learner led a great program, telling our families not only how to make fun and beautiful scrapbook pages with their kids but also how to use the craft and the photos as a springboard for family storytelling time. Each family got to take home a tote bag with scrapbooking materials and a little photo album.

Video on learning differences

2008-12-18T12:28:00.000-08:00

It can be hard for tutors - especially new and inexperienced tutors - to understand some of the issues faced by our English-speaking learners. Many movies (and even a recent ESL video I saw recently) depict learning to read as something an adult can do pretty quickly if he or she just tries hard. We know, though, that it isn't that simple. Many adult learners struggle with learning differences that make learning to read a whole different experience than anything their tutors have ever faced.

Here is a link to a video that discusses learning differences in adults in interesting and compelling ways, and that I think really brings home the message that it takes more for some people than just trying hard to learn:

http://www.headstrongnation.org/documentary

It's a long video, but there's some interesting material right at the beginning; watch as much as you have time for, because there is a lot of good material here.

Ann Daniels
Families for Literacy Coordinator
Second Start Adult Literacy Program, Oakland

Our Families for Literacy Songbook

2008-06-09T15:59:00.000-07:00

Oakland's Families for Literacy program recently held a family night about music, where we sang many of our favorite songs. Here's the cover, introduction and table of contents from the songbook containing the songs we sang. (It looks a little odd here because it's formatted to print as a booklet, with staggered pages.) If you'd like a copy of the full songbook, contact Ann (click on that link to see my profile, which has my email address). Happy singing!

Outreach

2008-05-13T12:12:00.000-07:00

Hello fellow FFL-ers,

Let's talk about outreach.

I've been doing a lot of semi-regular outreach through our library: guest-teaching at a parents' ESL class that the Bookmobile visits, presenting family literacy materials and activities; helping out at library story times for parents & kids who live in a residential rehab/alternative incarceration facility near our office. The events and classes are a big hit, I've gotten to know the parents, they always want to talk to me - but I have yet to have anyone become a student here.

I'm thinking of focusing my attention instead on having our current FFL students bring in friends and family.

What do you think? What are you doing that is working/not working? Post a comment to this post, or email me (click on that link and you'll see my profile with my email address) and I will turn your email into a post.

Cheers,
Ann.

In honor of Earth Day

2008-04-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

In honor of Earth Day, here are the covers of my program booklets on Recycling: "Talking about Trash" and "Trash to Treasures." You can contact me if you want either booklet - just click the link on the side for Oakland Public Library, Second Start.

Bees, Beetles and Butterflies

2008-04-14T11:14:00.000-07:00

Dear friends,

Here is an amazing, 166-page illustrated pdf of stories, poems and songs I got from PUBYAC, a listserv of children's and young adult librarians:

http://www.story-lovers.com/bugbookv.2.pdf

Jackie Baldwin, the creator of this magnificent book, says:
..."because of its length (166 pages, 125 stories, 32 contributors) and the number of full-color photos included, it takes 1.5 minutes to download onto my computer, but I've heard from others that it can take nearly five minutes, depending on a computer's speed. Another friend did it in 25 seconds. My suggestion: go make a cuppa tea while the download is going on! ...If you decide to print out the whole book, I've designed it without any blank pages, so you can do odd numbers 1-165, then even numbers 2-166. But I would suggest that you split it into three sections, just to be sure that the printing is going as expected. I usually split it 50, 50, 66. You'll be doing double-sided pages, so you should use a heavier paper..."

Incidentally, if you are interested in PUBYAC, here is their link:
https://mail.prairienet.org/mailman/listinfo/pubyac
If you decide to subscribe, I highly recommend you get the digest (otherwise your mailbox will be flooded with a gazillion emails every day!)

Why Babies Need Books

2008-04-02T14:02:00.000-07:00

This is a handout prepared by Sandi Cohn, Marin Literacy Project. For the complete document, please contact Deborah at Partners in Reading.

Drop Everything And Read Day

2008-03-24T14:30:00.000-07:00

Drop Everything And Read Day is April 12, Beverly Cleary's birthday! I started celebrating Drop Everything and Read Day a few years ago. Before that, I used to give away books in honor of National Library Week; this seemed like more fun. Now I give my students' kids books for Drop Everything and Read Day - I give out Beverly Cleary books to the older sibs where appropriate, of course. And I give out bookmarks that I made, since even the kids and adults who have never seen Ramona love bookmarks. Here is my bookmark for this year, adapted from material from the DEAR site.

- Ann Daniels

Health Literacy - a hot topic in your community?

2008-03-03T12:34:00.002-08:00

Hello friends, We've had several family literacy programs on health topics over the past couple of years, most recently on the subject of children and other family members with asthma. It seems now that health literacy is a hotter topic than ever among hospitals, community organizations, etc. Has anyone else noticed this in their communities? Have you participated in health literacy programs, summits, etc. with community organizations, funders, or the like? Please comment and let us know what you have been doing - I think it would be interesting to share experiences.

- Ann Daniels
Second Start Adult Literacy, Oakland

Dr. Gena Lewis of Children's Hospital-Oakland talks about asthma

two of our kids make crafts while their parents discuss asthma triggers

Read to Me Handout

2008-01-14T16:58:00.001-08:00

Gentle Reader, Below you will find 2 jpg images (just click to see them full size) of a great family literacy handout from Sandi Cohn. Sandi created an impressive body of great materials and programs when working at the Marin Literacy Program. Deborah Estreicher from Partners in Reading of the San Jose Public Library will share some of Sandi's materials (and her own of course) with us through this blog.

Second Start Summary of FFL Programs Page 6

2008-01-14T16:46:00.001-08:00

Hey Folks, Here is the 6th and final page of the Families for Literacy Summary of Programs and Materials document from Ann Daniels. Pages 1 through 5 are in the previous post. If you have any questions or would like copies of any of these materials please don't hesitate to contact Ann at adaniels@oaklandlibrary.org.

Second Start Oakland Summary of FFL Programs

2008-01-14T16:39:00.001-08:00

Gentle Reader,
Below you will find 5 of the 6 pages (the 6th page will be in the next post) of a summary of family literacy programs facilitated by Ann Daniels at Second Start, the Adult Literacy Program of the Oakland Public Library. Ann has a wealth of family literacy materials which she soon will be sharing through this blog.

Family Literacy Tutor Training

2008-01-14T15:44:00.000-08:00

Gentle Reader,
Below you will find JPG images of the 3 pages of the family literacy instructional materials we use as part of our comprehensive tutor training. You can view any page in full size by clicking on the image. I am also including a link to MS Word and PDF versions of these materials which are housed on our San Francisco Public Library website. If you find any of these materials helpful please feel free to use them for non-profit educational purposes.
Thanks, Brian

Click Here for the Project Read SFPL Instruction Resources Page

Welcome

2007-05-07T16:49:00.000-07:00

(Click this logo for the BALit website)

Gentle Reader,
Welcome to this friendly little web site created by Families for Literacy staff from Public Library Literacy Programs of the San Francisco Bay Area and neighboring counties (BALit). We plan to share helpful strategies and resources that support adult literacy learners in creating a home environment where sharing books and engaging in learning activities are natural parts of family life.
All the best, Brian