The first phase of Book Bridges, an English-as-a-Second Language literacy project for immigrant women and their children, was evaluated. Fifteen clients completed the first 10-week, 60-hour program designed to increase English vocabularies, give clients opportunities to express ideas in English, and provide a framework for facilitating…

Project LEIF (Learning English through Intergenerational Friendship) is a program begun in 1985 in which an intergenerational core of tutors was trained to teach English to refugees in the Philadelphia area. The program has since expanded and been replicated in four other cities. This manual is intended to help those individuals or groups…

About two-thirds of the 963 million people in the world who cannot read and write are women, according to the United Nations. Women who are illiterate cannot pass on literacy skills to their children. The United Nations proclaimed 1990 International Literacy Year and conducted conferences for literacy. Education for women and girls was designated…

This document contains an annotated list of 95 resources about and/or for use in adult and family literacy programs. The list includes a wide variety of publications, including background reading materials, parent and teacher guides, program descriptions, reports of research projects, discussions/analysis of government policy, assessment…

These two documents discuss two related family literacy projects that were conducted to develop a model for providing sustained literacy and developmental activities to economically disadvantaged families throughout Pennsylvania. The first document details the development/implementation of the Families Reading Together program, which built upon…

This guide is intended to help adult education programs establish family literacy programs and create Family Learning Centers in Cleveland Public Schools. The information should assist program coordinators in developing educational components that offer activities to raise the self-esteem of the parents and provide them with the knowledge and…

Efforts to solve intergenerational literacy must focus on the family as a unit. However, schools traditionally have a poor track record in dealing with minority/disadvantaged students and involving their parents. Studies have demonstrated the importance of family/community influence on children as well as the cultural and linguistic insensitivity…

This overview of intergenerational and family literacy programs in the United States consists of five sections, a bibliography, and four appendices. Section 1 presents background information and expectations for programs and describes the target populations and program designs and administration. Section 2 describes the research base and the…

This paper presents excerpts from the author's diary describing the experiences encountered while conducting the Theater Workshop Project, a project designed for enhancing the literacy of homeless mothers and children. The project's objectives and techniques are to: (1) use storytelling in the shelters as an entertaining vehicle to begin to build…

This five-chapter guide for coordinators of community-based literacy groups working with prisoners is illustrated with prisoners' drawings. The first chapter examines issues affecting learning behind bars. Topics covered include similarities to and differences from other programs, respecting the learner's culture, links between poverty and…

Recent research on adult education and literacy development (AELD) programs in workplaces that teach English, reading, and mathematics skills integrated with job knowledge indicates they contribute to improved job-related literacy and mathematics skills, improved job productivity, and increased reading to children at home. AELD programs can help…

An evaluation was made of PACE (Parent and Child Education), a family literacy program initiated in Kentucky in 1986. PACE was created because of the widespread belief that the state has a serious problem with undereducation of its adult population and the belief also that this problem is the result of persistent patterns of educational failure…

This document, which was developed for use by the participants in a national staff development videoconference on making sense of the issues in family and adult literacy, contains useful information and resources for literacy program staff who are considering making changes in their literacy programs. The document consists of the following:…

A project was undertaken to develop a model that adult basic and literacy education (ABLE) programs throughout Pennsylvania could use as a framework to develop and implement collaborative family literacy programs in cooperation with human services agencies and community-based organizations, including providers of Even Start, Head Start, and other…

An adult basic education (ABE) class was developed to help parolees of the Schuylkill County Prison develop reading, writing, and communication skills and use those skills in a community service project aimed at helping at-risk youth. Parolees were recruited into the project through county parole officers, and their reading, writing, self-esteem,…