Literacy Connections (LC) was founded in 1975 as Literacy Volunteers of America-Dutchess County, Inc. The agency changed its name to Literacy Connections in 2005. Literacy Connections is a private, not-for-profit, 501(C) (3) organization committed to helping adults and families become functionally literate. The organization works with the lowest literacy level adults in Dutchess, Columbia, and Greene Counties.
Our core program is to help adults to learn to read and write, and function independently by recruiting and training volunteers to provide one-to-one and small group tutoring that is student-centered. Student centered means not following a pre-determined curriculum, and giving a voice to the student with regard to their learning goals. Teaching adults is not the same as teaching children. Materials must be sensitive and respectful of adult learners, and because adults face so many challenges in their daily lives, the learning must be relevant and meaningful. Recognizing that illiteracy/low literacy is a family issue, our Adult & Family Literacy Program also offers reading enrichment to children who are struggling with reading in the 2nd-4th grades – the crucial time when children are transitioning from learning to read to reading to learn.
MISSION STATEMENT Literacy Connections is dedicated to developing and offering programs and services to support a literate society. We recruit and train volunteers to provide no-cost student-centered tutoring
In Deborah Brandt’s article, Sponsors of Literacy, she defines sponsors as, “… any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way” (pp 166). There have been a few people in my life who have done exactly that; they helped me gain knowledge on many topics in hopes that I would find it informative and be able to better the world around me.
People are exposed to literacy all throughout their lives through learning and experiences. The way one is exposed to literacy varies from person to person. In Deborah Brandt’s Sponsors of Literacy she states that literacy is not only the ability to read and write but also one’s ability to apply those skills to daily life. One gains much of their literacy through the different sponsors they experience. A sponsor is “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy and gain advantage by it in some way” (46). Throughout Brandt’s essay she gives examples of different types of people who experienced different upbringings with a variety of sponsors.
Literacy is a wide known understanding, used in all aspects of society. Anywhere you go, the stage of your literacy in given situations is tested. Literacy ranges in places like the home, at work, teams, and so much more. When asked to interview someone, and dive into the aspect of their literacy of a given community, I instantly knew what I wanted to do. I recently joined the sisterhood of Pi Beta Phi, and even more recently was given a “Big Sister”, that I will now have as a part of my life, forever. Her name is Hailey Thomsen, and she is a junior at the University of Central Florida, and was the perfect person to interview for this project.
Literacy Collaborative is high quality program oriented around rigorous instruction and purposeful teacher-student interactions. It is a framework based on authentic, global, and holistic language acquisition, which include both reading and writing workshops. Within this framework teachers differentiate instruction through flexible grouping such as whole-class, small group and/or individualized instruction. Additionally, teachers create opportunities for students to engage in targeted activites throught the utilization of interactive and shared reading experiences as well as tailored vocabulary and phonologica awareness lessons designed to met individual needs. The Literacy Collaborative framework strives to ehance student learning through engagement, purpose, systematic routines, data based instruction, and targeted interventions. Students are encourage to beome an active participant in their learning experience through student choice, open-ended question, and targeted
The idea of Sponsors of Literacy was originally proposed by Deborah Brandt in her 1998 article, “Sponsors of Literacy.” In her article, she argued that Sponsors of Literacy include people, institutions, and circumstances; they vary based on the person’s experiences and surroundings. Sponsors of literacy are essential in everyone’s life due to the powerful role they demonstrate on the long run. In my own reading and writing experience, my sponsors of literacy were my childhood memories, my school, and the various resources I’ve used to accomplish an outstanding Multi-Genre Research Paper.
From early on in school you learn that reading is going to be something truly important in your life and are given books to read all the time, but at what point did you actually start to accept and enjoy reading in your life? Literacy sponsors are “the people, institutions, materials, and motivations” (Deborah Brandt (167)) that shape who you are as a reader, in my life my literacy sponsor was my grandparents since they are the ones who gave me many of my favorite books and helped me keep up with my older cousins’.
Literacy plays a huge role in my daily life. Every single day I read and write. Whether it’s writing an email or reading a text message, class assignment, discussion board, etc. My literacy journey is unique because I have had different experiences. As a result, this is how my literacy journey has let me to be the reader that I am.
Since a child going up, literacy was not my strong suit. Literacy throughout my life seem not to cope with me. Later as I grew up, literacy meant to me that it is one’s ability to read, write, and speak. More importantly there is a more meaning of literacy, meaning that not only writing, reading, and speaking, but able to understand, analyze, and communicate with other peoples’ ideas. Soon enough literacy has made an impact on my life, it has been and will be a lifelong process. Literacy will always be with me, starting from my past and ending in my future.
Literacy is fundamental to all areas of learning from an early age, as it unlocks access to the wider curriculum. Being literate increases opportunities for pupils in all aspects of life and lays the foundations for lifelong learning and work.
Becoming literate opens the doors to more educational and employment opportunities. In our increasingly complex and rapidly changing technological world, it is essential that individuals
At the Reading Partners organization has visualize that all children have the right gain of reading skills necessary to reach their potential needs. In addition, the mission is to help children constant reading skill by providing individuals with need help with. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses,
Literacy embraces reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Integrating all of these into a literacy program is key. Teachers must provide endless and ongoing opportunities for their student to read, write, listen, and speak.
In the world that is becoming more technology driven on daily bases, literacy skills are growing increasingly important to my future career. I'm as a second language speaker who had to submerge myself and literally learn a new language, new culture and new traditions. My life wasn't easy improving my literacy skills, but my plans for the future, which is high education and my
There are several strategies that can be employed to assist those who suffer disadvantage. Early interventions, (the earlier the better), are recommended to target deficit skills through reading recovery or acceleration programs (Sparks, 1999:13-16, Cunha & Heckman, 2007:1-5). The most successful projects appear to be those that also target families, either by providing resources or through family literacy projects. Parents can thus become upskilled themselves, becoming better equipped in the process to support their children’s progress. ‘The remediation efforts that appear to be most effective are those that supplement family environments for disadvantaged
“It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. Something that will stretch their imaginations-something that will help them make sense of their own lives and encourage them to reach out toward people whose lives are quite different from their own.” - Katherine Patterson. Literacy is a right. It is implicit in the right to education. It is recognized as a right, explicitly for both children and adults, in certain international conventions. Literacy is the ability to read and write, and also refers to having enough reading and writing ability to function in society. People who cannot read and write are called illiterate. People are called functionally illiterate if they cannot read or write well enough to do activities that are common in social settings they encounter. Such activities may include employment, schoolwork, voting, or worship. The power of literacy is something that can change the world. How far has literacy come since the beginning and what is its history; what are the causes of a lower literacy rate; what effects can lower literacy rates have; what about higher rates; what are some ways to improve the literacy rates and; what are some of the benefits to a higher literacy rate?