Update March 22

The Building Family Literacy and Essential Skills Advisory Committee met on March 10, 2010.

Ideas generated by the committee:

• Keep connected with Project Read (through Lorri) so as to not duplicate curriculum ideas between the two projects,
• Write an UPP facilitator’s manual,
• Make sure the participatory approach is a key element for facilitators to include in program development
• Examine and build up the Essential Skills components of the curriculum where necessary
• Set up a theme format so levelled Essential Skills activities are easy to use/find (e.g., like an SRA box).

I’ve started writing the Facilitators’ Manual and hope to have a rough draft (very rough) by the end of this week. I’m thinking about the Essential Skills activities idea. I need to figure out an easy way to do this!

Anne and her team (Shelley and Deb) have been doing lots of outreach in North Kingston. It is hoped that this will encourage parents to join the UPP program at the Wally Elmer Community Centre. We have three definite participants and a few more who have said they are interested. We are hoping for a vibrant group.

In a couple of weeks we will approach a few of these UPP participants as well as some LBS students from our North Kingston site to do PDQ and the parent questionnaires. We know how difficult testing situations can be for students. We want to learn more about how to design the testing process so it is the most positive experience for students. We hope that by doing a few tests now, we will see where the difficulties lie in terms of the way we present it and do it, on the testing day. We will change our approach if necessary for our fall groups.

I’ve had a couple of requests for the link to the PDQ. Here is a link to use. From here you can take a mini test (very mini) to get an idea of what it’s like. You may need to temporarily allow pop-ups. I need to do that each time. When you are on the page, scroll to the bottom and to “start the demo of some sample items”.

http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuitem.1488512ecfd5b8849a77b13bc3921509/?vgnextoid=f509af5e44df4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD&vgnextchannel=0992e3b5f64f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD

If this link doesn’t work for you, Google ETS Testing and choose the American ETS link. The Canadian site sells only ESL testing. When on the ETS site, go to tests (tab at the top) > ETS Literacy >Test Preparation.

We re-posted the On-line Course Developer position on the HRSDC Job Bank and Kijiji. We have had many responses from the Job Bank and one from Kijiji. Fortunately one applicant in this grouping definitely has (on paper) what I’m looking for. That makes at least two because there is one from our original call who what looks like the right background.

The annual exercise of “year-end” book keeping is in full swing at KL&S. Please, save our trusty book keepers from pulling out their hair -- send your remittance forms for the Advisory Committee meeting to KL&S if you have not done so already.

Cheers,
Deb