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Conference |
Conference Comments Notes from the National Conference on Family Literacy Frances
Houser In our meeting at Long Beach, we discussed posting a paragraph about the workshops attended at the National Center for Family Literacy conference. Here's mine. - Frances There were only 2 breakout sessions per day (Sunday and Tuesday, 4 on Monday) and always several workshops in each time slot that looked interesting. To get as much information as possible, I marked sites of interest then wandered by before and after the presentations to see how many handouts I could get from sessions I has to miss. This plan worked well and several additional handouts are attached to this summary Sharon Darling, President and Founder of National Center for Family Literacy, also the keynote speaker for the Opening General Session In an impressive setting, standing at a podium on a stage set above more than 1,000 people seated at round tables, and flanked by 2 huge screen monitors that ensured everyone could see the speaker, Sharon drew an interesting metaphor of the literacy family as an orchestra. According to her vision:
Parent-Child Literacy Interactions on a Shoestring Using the premise that literacy activities should be fun and that the power and pleasure of literacy is unleashed when everyone is involved, the presenters read several books to us then showed related activities and discussed the "How-tos". All this information is in the handout, but it was worthwhile to actually see and learn how to make the accompanying activities. Ideas could easily be incorporated into our FFL programs. Digital Family Stories Two presenters from the Redwood City School District told how to help adult learners learn to organize stories and to make videos. The presenters first had the group brainstorm ways that making videos can relate to literacy instruction. They went through the steps of creating a storyboard and using that to create a video. They showed us several student-made videos and led a discussion of how this activity relates to the Equipped for the future Content Standards. It looked that a fun activity that might be something we could try as a learner group effort using the niche of the Student Book Club. Joan Ohl, Commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth , and Families of US Dept of HHS and keynote for Monday's General session
Learning to Think , Thinking to Learn In this workshop, Jennifer Cromley presented an overview of her book by the same title produced for the National Institute for Literacy and available at www.nifl.gov/nifl/fellowship/cromley_report.pdf . Using comics to illustrate her points was entertaining and made concepts like domain specificity, mental models, reading strategies, and short and long term memory easier to understand than a straight lecture would have. Here, There, Everywhere Software: How to Choose the Best This workshop was great for novices like me who need to learn how to choose ESL software, see an overview of some programs (computer monitor projected on a large screen for us all to see), and get some hands-on practice reviewing software by filling out evaluation sheets. It provided a valuable overview that included 3 software demo disks that we were each given to bring home and the LAUSD Technology Guide, a manual full of good materials such as annotated bibliographies and evaluation templates for us to use in setting up our own learning labs. Verizon Literacy University The concept here is good but the website is still under construction ( see http://www.vluonline.org ) and the presentation had very little to say - see handouts. I stayed for a while, but left and went to the end of Fatherhood and Literacy, a more informative workshop. Fatherhood and Family Literacy: A Perfect Fit I came into this one late (see above); a few points of note were:
Monday night banquet
Sesame Street Language to Literacy Workshop In the first workshop on Tuesday, the presenters talked about the challenges of working with parents of children ages 0-3, then presented clips from the PBS television show Sesame Street and talked about ways to use this program and related activities to support the children's literacy development. The Best New Children's Books for Preschools This was a great way to end a frenetic 3 days of travel, workshops, special sessions and banquet, poster sessions, and viewing of exhibits. The presenter, the owner of a children's book store, recounted how she got started doing what she does, passed out catalogs for her store, and read several new children's books, from a variety of subject areas to us. It was relaxing to just sit and listen to great new reads and also led to the formation of a wish list for next year's programming. The 155+ page booklet that contains the templates is titled "Technology Guide: A review of technology-based materials for ESL/CBET and Citizenship." It doesn't contain any contact information; the cover only states, "Division of Adult and Career Education, Los Angeles Unified School District." The conference program lists the presenters as Eva Quezada, Edward C. Wu, and Jennifer Moreno. Perhaps if you call the LAUSD and ask for this guide or one of these people, you can track it down.
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