Special thanks for literacy fact sheets to:
Shirley Spencer, Idaho Department of Vocational Education
Peggy McClendon, Idaho State Library
National Institute for Literacy

ADULT BASIC EDUCATION

Workplace Essential Skills is a 25-part telecourse that teaches the attitudes and competencies necessary for success at work. This series demonstrates basic skills and illustrates how those skills are to be used in realistic workplace settings including construction, manufacturing,health care, and retail/service industries. Check back this fall to see when this program will be airing!

Workplace Essential Skills provides motivational, step by step information on how to find and keep a job and focuses on workers from all walks of life, from a rural teenager seeking a career, to a welfare mother learning how to get back into the workforce. Learn the basic skills to succeed in life, whether it is the first step towards your GED, writing an effective resume, or learning how to communicate with your boss, Workplace Essential Skills provides you with the skills for success. Visit Literacy Link to learn more about web-based activities to supplement the videos.

Career Advantage is a 26-part telecourse that offers job-hunting tips from the pros and gives real guidance on making basic career decisions. Check back this fall to see when this program will be airing!

Check out our telecourse schedule for air dates on these and other exciting programs for adult basic education.

ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE
CONNECT WITH ENGLISH uses stories to motivate students to learn English. Through the story of Rebecca, an aspiring singer on a journey across America, CONNECT WITH ENGLISH touches on life's important issues: leaving home, parenting, education, work, love, success, and loss. All of the characters use meaningful, natural language that viewers can put to work immediately in their own lives.Levels: High Beginning, Low Intermediate, High Intermediate.

Idaho Public Television is pleased to offer a wide variety of recursos en español for our Spanish-speaking viewers.

IdahoPTV's educational cable programming also provides a diverse range of foreign language and ESL programming.

BOOKS ON TV
Idaho Public Television broadcasts 56 hours every week of high-quality, educational children's programs. BETWEEN THE LIONS, READING RAINBOW, ARTHUR, BOOKWORM BUNCH and NODDY are all book-based and encourage reading. Click on any of the programs for a schedule of what book will be featured each day. Also, check out monthly Connections for more program and book information.

BETWEEN THE LIONS is an award-winning book-based program that kids love. Watch it weekdays at 10:30/9:30 a.m. MT/PT and repeats at 5:00 p.m. PT only. BETWEEN THE LIONS is named for a family of lions who run a library like no other on earth. The doors swing open to reveal a magical place where characters pop off the pages of books, vowels sing, and words take on a life of their own. The series combines innovative puppetry, animation, live action, and music to transform the sometimes confusing process of learning to read into an entertaining adventure for children ages 4 to 7 and their families.

NODDY has a thematic book list which is an excellent resource when looking for children’s literature on a specific topic!

Don't miss our children's schedule page for information on all of our quality children's programming!

CONNECTIONS
IdahoPTV's monthly newsletter, Connections is designed for those who care for children, birth through eight. Connections provides television to book correlations, a list of the daily themes of selected children's programs, along with recommended books for infants, toddlers, and pre-schoolers that tie to weekly themes. Add some related, fun activities, and you've created some connections that enable engaging and powerful learning.

Download and print your own copy of the current monthly Connections newsletter!

NOTE: In order to download Connections you will need to have the free program Adobe Reader. If you do not have it click here to download to your computer now.

IdahoPTV's FIRST BOOK
Idaho Public Television distributes 1700 books each month around the state to underprivileged children. The goals of IdahoPTV's First Book are:
* to build a love of reading and encourage family literacy
* to build a library of 12 books for a child who otherwise might not own books. (New groups of children are selected annually in May to receive books.)
* when books are given to the children, they be accompanied by an activity which extends the learning and helps to build a love of reading.
* that parental education be provided whenever possible.

Funding for Ready to Read is provided by:  The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, A grant from the U.S. Department of Education, The J.A. & Kathryn Albertson Foundation, and the Idaho State Library.

For a list of current Ready to Read partners, click here

WORKSHOPS
Idaho Public Television offer workshops for parents, teachers and child care providers. Topics are:

• Connections: Making Good TV Better for Young Children
• Television and the Toddler
• What Do You Do with the Mad that You Feel?
• The 3 Rs: Rhythm, Rhyme, and Reading
• Storytelling
• Television Violence
• Using Television To Teach

For information on workshops in your area call 1-800-543-6868.

COMMUNITY EVENTS PROMOTE LITERACY
Head Start children and their families learned how family storytelling can promote emergent literacy as well as being fun, when NODDY visited the Nez Perce, Coeur d'Alene and Sho-Ban reservations. Families, caregivers and children coupled their original stories with an educational craft activity, and learned to use IdahoPTV's educational children's shows to promote reading and literacy.

IdahoPTV partnered with Foster Grandparents working with special needs students in Canyon, Washington, Payette, Owyhee, and Gem counties to build literacy skills and a love of reading. The project was funded by grants from the Whittenberger Foundation and the producers of NODDY, a PBS children's programs which focuses on inter-generational storytelling.

To celebrate our First Book partnerships with library outreach programs, IdahoPTV's Early Childhood Educators made guest appearances at libraries around the state in the spring of 1999. They read a book, modelled interactive use of a video clip from a PBS children's show, and did a fun activity with children. All children who attended received a free hard cover book from IPTV.

To promote literacy, we have also toured the state with two events centered around PBS book-based children's programs. ARTHUR made 18 appearances during National Children's Literacy Month. Our "Dog Days of August" featured WISHBONE Best-Dressed Dog contests in 8 towns and cities across the state.

TEN WAYS TO HELP YOUR CHILDREN BECOME BETTER READERS
Most children will learn how to read. Whether they will become good readers depends in large part upon your help and encouragement. As a parent you can:

1. Help your children acquire a wide range of knowledge. When you take your children on shopping trips, walks in the park, and visits to zoos and museums, you help give them the important background knowledge they will need as they learn to read school textbooks. Your children's ability to understand even simple stories can depend upon their having both common and not-so-common knowledge.

2. Talk with your children about their experiences. When you talk with your children about their experiences, you help them learn new words and understand what those new words mean. Talking with children also helps them learn from their experiences and use this new knowledge to understand what they are reading. As a result, they will better understand what they are reading.

3. Encourage your children to think about events. Ask your children to describe events; this makes them reflect upon experiences and helps them learn to give good descriptions and tell complete stories. These activities help your children learn about how stories are written and better understand what they are reading.

4. Read aloud to your children. Reading aloud is probably the single most important activity you can do to encourage your children's success as readers. It is an especially important activity during the preschool years. When you read lots of stories to your children, and look at lots of picture books with them, you are helping them build the store of knowledge they will use when they begin to read in school. The benefits of reading aloud are greatest when you encourage your children to participate in this activity by identifying letters and words and talking about the story and the meaning of words.

5. Provide your preschool children with writing materials. Writing is an important way for your children to learn about letters and words. Children are often very eager to learn how to write and you can encourage them by having paper and pencils or crayons in your home and helping them when they start drawing letters. Even when your children are too young to hold a pencil or crayon, you can use devices such as magnetic boards and letters to help them learn about letters and words.

6. Encourage your children to watch TV programs that have educational value. Watching television programs can have a positive effect on your children's learning. You can make sure they watch these programs regularly. You can also help them learn from these programs by asking questions about the shows and relating what they are seeing to other situations and experiences.

7. Monitor how much TV your children watch. Watching quality television programs up to about 10 hours a week can have a slightly positive effect on your children's achievement in school, including their reading achievement. As the number of hours of viewing per week increases, however, TV watching becomes a negative influence on your children's school work. Most children who watch television 20 or more hours a week don't do well in school.

8. Monitor your children's school performance. When you visit your children's teachers, observe their classrooms, find out about the reading programs in their schools, and participate in home-school programs, you can get a good idea of how your children are doing in school and how you can help them become better students. Research shows that children tend to be more successful readers when their parents have an accurate view of their school work.

9. Encourage your children to read independently. The amount of reading your children do outside of school influences how well they will read in school. Most American children don't read very much during their free time. One of your top priorities as a parent should be to encourage your children to spend more time reading. You can help them read more by having plenty of books in your home and visiting the library regularly.

10. Continue your personal involvement in your children's growth as readers. Set a good example for your children by reading newspapers, magazines, and books. Suggest reading as a leisure time activity and make sure your children have time for reading. You may want, for example, to establish a bedtime hour after which reading is the only activity permitted other than going to sleep.

This pamphlet is part of Idaho Public Television's Literacy initiative funded by the Whittenberger Foundation.

FOR INFORMATION CONTACT: 1-800-543-6868