Book Bridges
Beverly Zakaluk

Introduction

Book Bridges is a family literacy program that uses children¹s literature selections to engage learners and explore reading comprehension strategies. In addition, Book Bridges incorporates process writing (Graves, 1983). The reading component is organized around themes, beginning with the reading of family stories, realistic and historic fiction, fables and folk tales and concluding with an emphasis on informational text. In the writing workshops, participants first create biographies and then, in keeping with what they are reading, develop their own family stories.

The children of participants are indirectly involved by sharing the storybooks that their mothers bring homeeach week, by creating albums about family members, and by writing family stories. As the participants come to realize the social nature of learning, their children become more metacognitively aware because their mothers begin to share the reading and writing strategies that they have learned in the program. The potential therefore exists to enhance the children¹s school performance.

Book Bridges activities are directed toward adult learners with literacy skills that range from non-measurable to approximately the grade 8 level. Most participants have reading levels that are about the grade 3 or 4 level. Book Bridges is not designed to develop test-taking, study skills, technical writing abilities, or to help participants qualify for general equivalency diploma certification, although competencies acquired in the program may give participants the confidence to aspire to higher levels of attainment in the future.

Program Development

The Book Bridges program is an off-shoot of Bookmates which has been in operation since 1983. Bookmates offers a series of three workshops for the parents of preschoolers that emphasize: (1) the value of reading to preschool children, (2) functional literacy which draws children¹s attention to the signs that are all around us conveys the idea that print carries meaning, and (3) the role that paper and pencil play in early learning. While the Bookmates program (Zakaluk & Silver, 1993) is not the focus of this article, this program has continued to expand and now includes training so that members of the community can conduct the parent workshops themselves.

Book Bridges came about when the Junior League of Winnipeg, in keeping with its 1989 mandate to focus on education, job training and illiteracy, approached Bookmates about the possibility of offering a program for adults. Book Bridges has become a much extensive program than Bookmates. It consists of sixty hours of instruction over a ten-week period. Participants attend two three-hour evening sessions a week. A useful organizational plan is to offer the program once in the fall and once in the early spring. The Book Bridges program is of sufficient scope however, that the duration of the program can be extended by using more reading selections and by providing more practice in the use of each strategy over time.