Friday, August 19, 2016

Redlands Library :: An Honest Tale

Redlands Adult Literacy Program
An Honest Tale



Welcome to the Redlands Adult Literacy Program, whose mission is to provide free, professional, and confidential tutoring in reading and writing to help learners in the Redlands community reach their literacy goals.  One-on-one tutoring services, adult literacy computer classes, and other literacy services are available to adults 18 years and older and youths 16 and 17 years old, who are not currently enrolled in high school.  Tutoring services are provided at no cost.  Lessons are individualized, confidential, and goal-oriented.

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

California Value of Volunteer Time 2015 :: $27.59 per hour

National Value of Volunteer Time: 2015

Estimated Value of Volunteer Time for 2015: $23.56 per hour
California: $27.59

The estimate helps acknowledge the millions of individuals who dedicate their time, talents, and energy to making a difference. Charitable organizations can use this estimate to quantify the enormous value volunteers provide.

According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, about 62.8 million Americans, or 25.3 percent of the adult population, gave 7.9 billion hours of volunteer service worth $184 billion in 2014.2 For the latest information, please see www.volunteeringinamerica.gov.

For more information on the economic impact of nonprofits by state, please visit our state profiles portal.


Saturday, August 13, 2016

CLOZE Activities :: ESL | Comprehension | Songs | Jokes | Vocabulary

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Superlatives from SCLLN

10 Clever Cloze Activities for Any English Classroom




Suzanne by Leonard Cohen
– a gap-fill listening comprehension exercise








Quick Cloze Passages for Boosting Comprehension 2



FREE Cloze Reading Worksheet:
http://ow.ly/pzk0303c9tr



5 ESL Cloze Activities to Make Vocabulary Stick All Year Long






This app constructs open cloze tests
and vocabulary lists from Wikipedia articles.
My students really like doing...



Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Camarena Library :: Selected to Pilot Spanish Literacy Course Across California


Camarena Memorial Library To Increase Among Non-Literate Latino Adults Selected to Pilot Spanish Literacy Course Across California
Desert Review: 7.20.2016

The Camarena Memorial Library has been selected as one of nine libraries across California to join a pilot program – LeamosTM (Let’s Read) @ the Library. Centro Latino for Literacy (Centro Latino), a nonprofit organization headquartered in Los Angeles, launched the project to bring its online literacy course to the state’s non-literate Spanish speakers, which number 573,866 (2009-2011 ACS, PERE pooled file). The two-year pilot project is supported by a grant awarded by the James Irvine Foundation to Centro Latino to explore partnerships with public libraries. Greg Lucas, California State Librarian said, “In a state which gained a Latino plurality [in 2014], it seems at a minimum good common sense to encourage programs like Leamos. Without literacy skills in their native language, proficiency in English becomes significantly harder, if not impossible, to attain.”

Public libraries will incorporate the use of Leamos™ as an effective strategy to both promote reading at its most basic level and to effectively outreach to Spanish-speakers in their communities. “Leamos @ the Library is the portal for non-literate Spanish speakers to close both the basic and digital literacy gaps and to increase civic engagement,” stated AnaMaria Ruiz, Centro Latino Board Liaison, pointing out that a key initiative of the James Irvine Foundation is to increase civic engagement. “Learning to read and write is ground zero. Many students have described learning to read and write as being able to see after a lifetime of being blind – ‘Ya tengo ojos (Now I have eyes)’”.

Library literacy staff involved with the Southern California Library Literacy Network (SCLLN) have encountered this need in their communities, but have lacked the resources to address it. 

Meanwhile, Centro Latino for Literacy (Centro Latino) has been teaching basic literacy skills to Spanish speakers since 1991 and in 2004 transferred its course to an online platform to make it available beyond its Los Angeles classrooms. Now operating as a social enterprise, Centro Latino licenses its proprietary LeamosTM (Let's Read) Basic online course to workforce development organizations, parent engagement groups, community colleges, public libraries and more.  In March 2015 the James Irvine Foundation awarded a two-year grant to Centro Latino to deepen its impact statewide; Centro Latino chose to focus this effort on partnerships with public libraries.  They have recruited five libraries for year one of the project (Roseville, Salinas, Santa Barbara, Riverside, and Covina), and  the library systems which already partner with Centro Latino will also participate in this project to bring the broadest possible perspectives and learning experiences together.  The five libraries currently involved are:  Azusa, Los Angeles County-Huntington Park branch, Los Angeles City Library, Huntington Beach, and Anaheim. Together these ten libraries will pilot using Leamos Basic as a tool for public libraries to teach literacy skills to Spanish speakers and their experience will be documented and guide an additional ten California libraries to provide Spanish literacy in their communities in year two of the Irvine grant. 

SCLLN has designed this LSTA proposal as a companion piece to leverage the James Irvine Foundation award to Centro Latino to strengthen its focus on public libraries as a community anchor – a “zocalo” (public square) familiar to Latin America immigrants.

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Prison Literacy :: Incarceration | Dyslexia | Inmates | Education | Reading | Library

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Superlatives from SCLLN

“Inmates enrolled in ed programs while incarcerated
were far less likely to return to prison.”


New podcast!
We talk w/ founder of @asocialignition,
an org that helps people re-enter society after incarceration





Prison program lets inmate moms send their voices


Prison libraries and prison library programs
can build bridges to literacy, love of reading.





Pop Culture Classroom is kicking off a new literacy program
at a CO prison using comics





Literacy can help fix America’s mass incarceration problem.
Here's how:



Pre-K To Prison Pipeline: A Case For Orton Gillingham!

Friday, August 5, 2016

LA Unified Reopens All District Libraries — But Forgets About the Books

LA Unified reopens all district libraries — but forgets about the books
LA School Report: 8.04.2016 by Mike Szymanski

For the first time since some school libraries were shuttered during budget cuts in 2008, all of the LA Unified school libraries will be back up and running when school starts again on August 16.

But according to the latest district estimates, the majority of students across Los Angeles will still be forced to rely on under-stocked library collections filled with outdated materials.

District numbers show that the average age of a book in a LAUSD library is now more than 20 years old, and that the books-per-student ratio is a shocking 35 percent below the state average. Even more dire: Most district schools have only a minimal budget to spend on bridging this gap—if they have any additional library funds at all.  READ MORE @

Little support for California’s public libraries
Sent to the Los Angeles Daily News, August 4.
Krashen: 8.04.2016

Julie Beth Todaro and Audrey Church are right when they argue that  "Shelving LAUSD’s school librarians would widen the learning gap," (August 3). Making the situation worse is data showing that California's public libraries are not well-supported.

California cities captured seven of the bottom ten places in the public library category of the recent (2015) "America's Most Literate Cities report." The report analyzes data from 77 cities with populations of 250,000 and above, and is based on number of branch libraries, holdings, circulation and staffing.

The bottom ten:
68. Los Angeles
69. Anaheim
72. Bakersfield
73. Sacramento
74. Chula Vista
75. Stockton
77. Santa Ana

Study after study has confirmed that library quality and professional library staffing are directly related to reading achievement.  More access to books, combined with helpful librarians, means more reading, and more reading means higher levels of reading achievement.

No wonder reading achievement is low in California.

Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus
University of Southern California