Abington Township Public Library

Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - 7:00 p.m. Tutor Support Meeting - Reading Comprehension. Guest speaker, Charles Kerr, Reading Specialist. Practical methods of teaching and available materials. Continuing education program credit.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 7:00 p.m. Tutor Support Meeting - Learning Disabilities. Guest speaker, Barbara Cooperberg, a Master Tutor. Materials and methods.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 7:00 p.m. Tutor Support Meeting - Materials, old and new, tried and true and the dictionary as a teaching aid. Continuing education program credit.

Monday, April 23, 2007 - 6:30 - 8:45 p.m. and Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - 6:30 - 8:45 p.m. Fall Tutor Training. Both nights mandatory! Welcome to all new volunteers.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 - 7:00 p.m. Tutor Support Meeting - Program testing for Adult Basic Education (TABE) and English as a Second Language (BEST) How? Why? When? Who? Continuing education program credit.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - 7:30 p.m. Gala reception honoring students and tutors. Guests invited. Come one, come all!

Adult Literacy Advisory Board - Representatives of Abington Free Library, Abington Memorial Hospital, Eastern Center for Art and Technology, Penn State Abington, Abington Township Schools and Rydal Park Retirement Community comprise this committee. Library representatives are Nancy Hammeke Marshall, Doranne Smith and Marlyn Cohen.

Assessment Committee – Barbara Cooperberg, Lois Bachman, Marcia Klafter, Marcia Jacoby and Marlyn Cohen oversee procedures for the TABE and BEST TESTS. Test outcomes are analyzed and reported. The Pennsylvania Department of Education requires administration of these standardized tests. Selma Dafilou and Arlene Franco are committee members.

Citizenship Committee – Marilyn Greenwald, Chairperson, will lead U.S. Citizenship candidates through the process from green card to citizenship. She is available to answer questions about U.S requirements. Call 215-885-5183 Elsa Louis-Charles will assist.

Conversation Please! - The daytime class meets Tuesday mornings, 10:30 till noon, under the supervision of three volunteer teachers. Ann Gaugler and Edis Hall welcome ESL students and help them feel comfortable while they learn the language and culture of America. Sara Chernoff and Jackie Cohen have joined the staff.

Conversation Please! - On Monday evenings at 7:15, Beverly Willett, Doranne Smith and Donna Hower lead an "English as a Second Language" class for foreign-born students at the library. Many countries are represented, and only English is spoken.

E-Quality Program Improvement Committee Lois Bachman, Selma Dafilou, Arlene Franco, Marcia Klafter, Marcia Jacoby and Marlyn Cohen work together toward program improvement. How can our tutors and students be served better?

Family Literacy - Led by Family Literacy Committee members, the committee meets one morning a week in Crestmont. Led by Edith Lane, Rena Spratt and Lillian Gibson.

GED Advisory - Lois Bachman, GED advisor, is available to answer GED questions. Please call 885-5183 for information.

Literacy Live - A talented group of performers who are eager to spread the literacy word via a live, script-in-hand performance at your club, service organization, school, church or synagogue. What does it take to be a volunteer, how does a student feel about needing help, how can we help as tutors? Our group is talented and inspirational. Please call 885-5183 to volunteer your talents or inquire about a performance. Geri Tyler will lead our troupe.

Master Tutors--Three Master Tutors (Lois Bachman, Marcia Klafter, and Barbara Cooperberg) are available to answer your questions regarding students, programs, materials and all literacy matters. Please utilize this great resource for any special needs. Call 885-5183

Reading Comprehension--A class for advanced readers who want to improve reading comprehension for the G.E.D., T.O.E.F.L., N.E.T., college entrance or any specialized test requiring advanced comprehension skills, will take place each Wednesday in January from 7-8:30 p.m. at the library. Marcia Klafter, reading specialist, will lead this class.

Technology Committee (Learning Center) -Computers, TV-VCR, and cassettes are all available in the literacy office. Our "techies", Marcia Jacoby and Elaine Lauff, are ready to help. Call 215-885-5183.

Tutor Support Committee - We are fortunate to have a dedicated group of volunteers who mail the Literacy Link and call the tutors regarding meetings, special events and program information. We meet once a month on a Monday and have a delightful time.

Workplace - Rydal Park Retirement Community is the site of a Tuesday afternoon class for employees who need literacy help. Doranne Smith, Peg Cheney and Ingrid Rivel work together to produce fine results in the workplace.

Write It Right - Students in need of extra help with grammar and writing skills are welcome Thursday afternoon from 1-2:30. Judi Rosen will lead this class, and individual instruction is available when needed.

Orchids - to Geri Tyler for taking on the leadership and revival of Literacy Live, our improvisational, theatrical troupe. A script-in-hand performance educates audiences about literacy from the tutor's and student's view. Call 215-885-5183 for more information.
Orchids - to Marilyn Greenwald, our Citizenship Chairperson, for organizing, updating and making inquiries about the latest requirements for citizenship candidates. She will be assisted by Elsa Louis-Charles. Orchids to Elsa.
Orchids - to Alice Sachs and Sarah Swanljung for tutoring math students for the GED with great success. Many thanks!
Orchids - to Lois Odabas for setting up our Webinar in the literacy office in mid-November. She did the advance programming and it was 110%!
Orchids - to Sheila Stieritz and Mary Grasly as new members of the Tutor Support Committee. A hearty welcome to you.
Orchids - to all 22 volunteers trained in September, 2006 Fall Tutor Training. We are thrilled to welcome you all.
Help Wanted--Committee members for literacy program projects are always needed. If you would like to volunteer, please call 885-5183. Your help would be greatly appreciated.
Help Wanted--Please sign out all materials in the brown sign-out book on the office desk under the first letter of your name. When returned, cross out. Please return any manuals and re-usable materials so that others may use them.
Help Wanted--Please mark your calendars for future dates through August. Come to Tutor Support Meetings as often as possible. Program continuing education credit is given.
Help Wanted--Call 885-5183 with any special news, any changes, goals reached, anecdotal accounts, problems and questions. Please keep the lines of communication open. If you need an answer, we will reply.
Help Wanted--Call the library’s main number 885-5180 for information re/library closings during inclement weather and/or national holidays and for library hours. If the library is closed or hours shortened, please inform your student ASAP. See Snow Alert Flyer.
Help Wanted--Please sign in at the circulation desk on the date you and your student are meeting. Those hours are calculated and recorded for the library statistics. We need your monthly attendance sheets for program data for hours and outcomes.
Orchids—to Elaine Lauff who will be working with Marcia Jacoby as a technology advisor to our tutors and students and as a data recorder. We are so pleased to have you, Elaine. She has been a dedicated tutor for several students in need. Orchids, Elaine!
Orchids—to our many new tutors trained in September who are paired with literacy students. We are so proud of your dedication and expertise. See listing in newsletter.
Orchids--to Marcia Klafter for the many program hats she wears. The Nurse's Entrance Test class in reading comprehension was highly successful. She serves as a Master Tutor and will be teaching a Reading Comprehension class in January, writes Tutoring Tips and teaches two literacy students one-on-one. Wow!!
Orchids--to the Family Literacy Committee composed of Edith Lane, Rena Spratt and Lillian Gibson for their dedication to the Head Start Program in Crestmont. Pre-schoolers benefit enormously from their special efforts. Many, many thanks!
rchids--to the circulation staff for serving as couriers and messengers on behalf of our tutors and students. They relay important information when there is a real need.
Orchids--to the children's department staff for their literacy cooperation-occasionally a special message or a key! Thank you, Carolyn, Andy, Christine, Katie, Vicki and Ro.
Orchids--to our Master Tutors, Lois Bachman, Marcia Klafter, and Barbara Cooperberg, for being available to answer all the difficult program questions. Please call them whenever necessary at 885-5183.
Orchids--to Lois Bachman, our GED chairperson, advisor, test scorer for all standardized testing and presenter at GED Tutor Support recent meeting. For any and all GED queries, call 885-5183.
Orchids--To Nancy Hammeke Marshall, Trudy McDonald-Egitto, Karen Burnham and Rick Guyton for editing, typing, laying out and printing the Literacy Link. Super job!
Orchids--to Pennsylvania Department of Education for providing an annual grant which makes the Abington Free Library Adult Literacy Program possible.
Orchids--to our exemplary tutors for their extraordinary efforts in improving their clients' lives. Our program couldn't exist without you.
Orchids--to Judi Rosen for leading the “Write It Right” class, Thursdays 1:00-2:30, helping foreign-born students improve English writing skills, GED candidates with their essays and all students with writing needs.
Orchids--to our Tutor Support Committee—Jane Taft, Elaine Lauff, Beverly Willett, Arlene Franco, Donna Hower, Ann Gaugler, Lois Bachman, Peg Cheney, Marcia Klafter and Maria Delatorre. They mail our Literacy Link and make phone calls about important literacy news. They deserve kudos.
Orchids--to our conscientious and loyal classroom teachers of “Conversation Please!” and Rydal Park Workplace. They help ESL students at the library on Monday evenings and Tuesday mornings and at the workplace class (ESL and ABE) on Tuesdays. Beverly Willett, Doranne Smith, Donna Hower, Ann Gaugler, Edis Hall, Sara Chernoff head the library classes. Peg Cheney, Ingrid Rivel, and Doranne Smith are the special Rydal Park teachers.
Orchids--to our Abington Free Library staff--reference, tech services, circulation, children's and office staff. You make our work a pleasure.
Orchids--to our incoming tutors, volunteers and students. The library doors are open, and all are welcome.

Tutoring Tidbits by Marcia Klafter

Vocabulary as a Key to Literacy

What do you do when your ESL or literacy student reads a selection without stumbling over the words and yet is at a low to tell you what the reading was about? Sometimes the root of this problem lies in an inadequate vocabulary that we assume is naturally part of adult spoken and written language. A literate adult learned vocabulary through skillful reading, life experience and through the different subjects studied in high school and beyond. You might want to try some of the following techniques with your students to help develop their reading and spoken vocabulary:

Before reading a selection, skim the material and identify words that might be unknown to your student. Teach the pronunciation, spelling and meaning of these words before beginning the oral or silent teaching.
Make sure your students get a chance to use and see the words that you teach in many different contexts. Have students use the word in sentences that pertain to their own lives. Try to incorporate new words into conversation in future sessions.
Teach “word-learning” strategies such as using context clues to get the meaning of unknown words (e.g., point out that an explanation of a word is often set off by commas.)
Teach words that sound alike but have different spelling and meanings (homophones such as “knew” and “new”) or words that look the same but have different meanings (homographs such as “the right to bear arms” and “Don’t go into the sun with a bare head.”) But, make sure you provide many exposures to these words in reading, writing and speaking. Repetition, repetition, repetition!
Before reading with your student, provide background information if the student has no experience with the topic. Ask a question or two before reading to figure out if the subject is familiar and, if it isn’t, you give a very brief explanation. To illustrate this point: my students were about to read a selection on the safety of vaccines for children. I briefly told them about some of the childhood diseases that had occurred in my mother’s family and how these diseases are no longer a worry to parents in the U.S. This “set the stage” for their silent reading and comprehension questions. They then figured out the meaning of such words as immunization, prevention, and mortality from the context of what they read.

Welcome!
A hearty welcome to the following volunteer tutors who were trained in September 2006, and are actively participating in the literacy program

Thanks to the computer, the WEBINAR was invented. It is an educational seminar on the web. Recently, Elaine Lauff, Marcia Jacoby and I participated in a statewide webinar for adult literacy. It was much easier than traveling to a site and attending a conference in person. The information obtained was easily understood and worthwhile.

“To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the respect of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to give of oneself; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition, to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier: this is to have succeeded.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Marlyn Cohen
Program Supervisor

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Call the library’s main number 215-885-5180 for information re/library closings during inclement weather and/or national holidays and for library hours.

If the library is closed or hours shortened, please inform your student ASAP.

Winter 2006-07