The Literacy Update ~ No. 1

The Newsletter of PEI Volunteers for Literacy. Winter/Spring 2006. PO Box 2000 Charlottetown PE C1A 7N8
Telephone 368-4695 Fax 368-3269. Toll Free 1-866-741-5683
Email: peivol@isn.net Home Page: www.nald.ca/peivol

Who are we? What do we do?

PEI Volunteers for Literacy have been volunteering in elementary schools for over 13 years as Project L.O.V.E. and as BOAST volunteers in intermediate and high schools for about five years.

In 35 schools across PEI, more than 250 very committed (mainly retired) older volunteers help students with their school work in various areas. In the elementary program, help is usually in that most important area, reading.

PEI Volunteers for Literacy go to their school at least once a week, spending between an hour and a whole morning or afternoon in the school. We usually help one student at a time, listening and coaching them with words, reading aloud to model good pronunciation and expression for them, helping with classroom projects or catching up on missed assignments.

Teachers whose students work with the volunteers all agree: Their students benefit greatly from this help, gaining self-confidence through the interest shown in them by our volunteers.

Why Boys Must Be Boys

Recently, we as a Board have been discussing what we might do to help the many boys involved in our program enjoy books more.

There are a number of good resources and book lists available, along with articles on gender differences in learning styles which recognize boys’ lack of interest in some of the offerings in the school reading program.

We have taken a very comprehensive list of books for boys provided by the Department of Education to children’s librarian Brabara Kissick. She has edited it for us.

The following list consists of books which are known to be read by boys who use the provincial library system.

A small warning: There are problems with providing book lists. The first is that some good books will have been left off by mistake. The second is that new books aren’t on the list.

Let this list be a guide for selecting books for those boys who just don’t seem to be able to find anything they like to read in the school’s reading program.

Get them at your local library if necessary. Remember they can be delivered to your branch if they are anywhere in the system!

Or take the advice of the teacher from Parkdale School, who said “They’re interested in natural history (bats, snakes, dinosaurs), car crashes, machines, - all grim subjects!”.