Wisdom from
Grandma's
rocking chair:
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Announcements
Click to get your Membership Application
The "Read To Baby Slogan Contest" is done, and the winners are...
Mentoring & Tutoring: Lamplighters plans to establish mentoring and tutoring programs. We are looking for volunteers to help us implement these programs. If you would like to help, please contact us.
Support Groups: If there is interest, Lamplighters will organize an education support group for parents in the area. Let us know if you would be interested utilizing a group such as this.
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| Welcome to Lamplighters |
Updated March 5, 2008
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LASTEST NEWS & PROJECTS:
Each One - Teach One Sessions
Each One-Teach One sessions with parents of young children and COP-ESD are held at the Lewiston Library. Watch this space for the announcement of our next session date.
If you have any questions about this program be sure and contact us 989-786-3159 or 989-786-4363
LAMPLIGHTERS ILLITERACY ESSAY SERIES
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Hello!
We will be presenting a series of essays about illiteracy; it's beginnings, its costs, its burdens, and the simple, low cost way it is being prevented by the schools in Kennewick, WA. These efforts, about a dozen, will be followed by another series about successful school systems around the country and how they also achieved stunning successes in increasing academic achievement. They will be brought to you by LAMPLIGHTERS - The Literacy People, who invite you to contact us at this website with questions, criticism, or (we fondly hope) a bit of praise. We sincerely believe you will find these efforts informative and pleasant to read. All the material will be documented in books found in the Lewiston, MI library on the LAMPLIGHTERS bookshelves. They've been placed there in the hope you will find answers to your education questions and much pleasant reading about improving education in your district.
Best wishes to our friends and neighbors
LAMPLIGHTERS
The Literacy People
All available installments of this series are available in our archives, which you can access by clicking here.
THE WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT DOES, HOW IT HURTS YOUR CHILD'S LIFE
Illiteracy Series - Part 4
We don't hear much about it, but the "achievement gap" really exists, it's at the heart of education's disarray and its impact is felt across all segments of our culture which means if you have children in school it seriously impacts their academic achievement no matter what their intellectual capacities are. It also impacts property values, job opportunities and limits business growth. Oh, and another thing, achievement gap is NOT created by the schools and certainly not the parents. The essential fact appears to be that many new kindergartners don't get to school on day one with the pre-literacy training that the other more than half of five-year old children possess and that is necessary for acquiring literacy in school --for learning to read and write.
That's right! The achievement gap is NOT created by the schools but it's the schools' biggest problem and shows every sign of getting worse as the years roll over us. However, those schools at the top of the academic heap have solved the problem of the gap at a cost of about $200 or less per entering skill-deficit child per year. The LAMPLIGHTERS shelf in the Lewiston library has a number of books that directly address the problem. Most of the information in this essay comes from the 90& READING GOAL, a short book about the Kennewick School district in Kennewick, Washington in the 1990's describing their experience with this achievement gap, called in these essays, The Gap.
Ready? Good. Let's start with describing the problem and what it looks like. The gap starts with kindergarten and involves entering five year olds. These are the children who lack the skills, increasingly called "pre-literary skills", like letter recognition, ability to print their own names, count to twenty plus others. The number of children who lack these pre-literary skills is about 40% of those entering our national education system every year.
OK. Now for the whole story...
Click here to read the rest of this article... |
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ABOUT LAMPLIGHTERS:
You may be asking yourself who we are. We are a group of dedicated, informed, concerned volunteers who feel that learning starts at home and is the business of the whole village. That groups composed of families, children, workers, citizens, stores and businesses, schools and everything else are what make a community what it is. We intend to 'light-up' learning within the community.
Our mission is to help the community and its families keep their kids motivated to learn, and to help keep kids, from birth through graduation, connected to the education process. Our Cradle to Kindergarten program is intended to be the starting point for the life-long adventure into the love of learning. This program helps parents prepare their child for the new things that will be happen when they start school, and even though it is primarily for ages birth to five years it is also useful up to grade 4. The Cradle to Kindergarten program is just one resource that we offer. We also provide support to children and their parents at all grade levels.
We believe that a community, composed of families, children, workers and its citizens must find out what its needs and wants are, and tailor the community education effort to fit those needs and wants. We help you discover what you want and help you shape what it is you get. We also guide you along the path of change as community and cultural needs evolve. Education is a two way street that requires learning by those being taught. If one is not susceptible to learning, they can never be taught anything by anyone.
There are many academic achievement problems a family can be facing. For example: the problem of children unready for the school experience or the problem of caring parents who don't know how to cope with academic achievement problems. Sometimes a child can be turned off by the whole idea of school. There's help for that kind of disconnect too. Check out our archives for information on some of the types of problems we can help with.
ABOUT LAMPLIGHTERS:
LAMPLIGHTERS - The Literacy People is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. If you would like to become a member, please print out our membership application and fill it out and mail it to the address shown on the application.
Click Here For A Membership Application
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