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ESOL Literacies Access 2 materials are newly available in Com Ed Centre. These are designed for ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) but have some really nice materials for any learner. Examples include flash cards with pictures for sounds, form filling and a great section on travel (buses, trains etc).

Six Book Challenge – The 2009 Six Book Challenge is underway. For those that haven’t taken part before, the challenge is to read six books and write a small bit about how you found the book. Last year several learners from Cowal received £10 book vouchers once they completed the challenge. I am still to find out whether there are vouchers on offer, but we can enter a prize draw if you have read your books by June. Learners should speak to their tutor or Sallie for information. Sallie will enrol any interested learners and give out the reading diaries. Books should be at the appropriate level for the learner, not too easy, but not too difficult. This should be fun! Quick Reads can be used for this.

 

Our Journey 3 booklet is out. There are five learners with work in rom Dunoon and they are superb! Extra copies are now available, so please ask for one and let your learner know that more are now available for friends, grannies etc! Also many thanks for the many hours of tutor support that went into this.

Tutors’ Swap Shop – Date Mon 11 May 7-9 pm. 
many apologies for not having a meeting this last term. Now the venings are getting lighter, perhaps it is time to hold an evening eeting. It would be great to see as many tutors as we can. Come and hare a concern or a good idea you have.

 

Return when you are finished.

10 new volunteer tutors have completed the ITALL
and are in the process of being paired with a learner.

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here are a few words in response to Duncan’s plea for contributions.
I have been a literacy volunteer tutor for a number of years and seem to specialise in one to one tutoring of mature men who have almost entirely missed out on reading and writing skills.

What wonderful characters I have met. Individualists who have amazing memories, great practical skills and an extraordinary range of interests (or none at all!). Without exception their manners have been impeccable. I have learnt so much from all my partners. The hours are filled with humour and chat as well as reading and writing. I look forward to my time tutoring.

 

My contribution to the partnership? Patience, listening, understanding the difficulties faced, endless confidence and confidence building. I need to be cheerful and enthusiastic.

 

I need to explain how the sounds of the letters relate to the words we speak (this can be very complicated with certain strong dialects). I need to point out where words are in the landscape because people who cannot read don’t see street names, place names on buses, words in supermarkets.

 

Abbreviations such as Mon., Mr., Dr., Jan., are meaningless. Where do these abbreviations come from? We speak the whole word. What a joy to have a surprised ‘learner’ say that a “bus stop” actually has those words on the sign or the doctor has his name on the surgery door. One student can now find items in the supermarket without needing to ask for help all the time. Another was delighted that he could read ‘Glasgow’ on a signpost. His navigation skills improved dramatically but I had to use photographs of signposts to convince him that he passed such facilities all the time, not just on motorways.

 

Some of my partners have learned to find names in alphabetical order; use directories, timetables, even maps. (Yes, water is shown in blue, forests in green etc.). Some have managed to write a letter and address an envelope. The list is endless. To me, all these successes are cause for celebration.

 

My greatest frustrations include: particularly when concentration levels are poor. adults with very basic literary skills and unusual interests. Beware of “issue based” books. Students and tutors alike can become demented with too many books about bullying or other “issues” irrelevant when teaching people to write their name, address or other such fundamentals. but their lives are full of many problems which often need to or do take precedence. I need to remember this.

 

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Celebration of Learning

On Thursday the 19th of March, I went to Inveraray to celebrate a learners’ day in the Argyll Hotel. The day was beautiful so driving there was a pleasure. When I arrived I was welcomed by the hotel staff with a cup of coffee and shortbread. Everybody there was very friendly. I went to the conference room, everything was ready for us and there was a nice welcome pack with the programme for the day.

 
First we listened to the manager about how the “Big Plus” is doing, what the plans are for the future and what people have achieved by learning with the “big Plus”. Some of the learners and one tutor told us about their work and the drop in project. At the end of this part we listened to “The Lone Rangers”, a group of women who sing songs, which they have written. The songs were very funny even if they were about serious problems.

The main workshop was called “Mystery story box”.

We were split into small groups and every group got a bag with 6 items. Every team had a leader who was helping us to write a story which would include something about every item. This task was very interesting because the ideas which people came up with were amazing.
After all this hard work, the hotel staff served for us a very nice lunch in a hallway. We also got a little souvenir – a mug. I enjoyed the day and was sorry that it flew by so fast. Anna Wincek - student Tutoring is a wonderful way to see the world from diverse points of view.

It has been a privilege to be allowed to be small part in the lives of a number of learners.

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This edition I want to say a little about printers. When computers came along we all thought that the paperless society had arrived. How wrong can you get? We still need to print stuff if only to send a letter to someone who has been wise enough to steer clear of computers. Perhaps you might like to print some of your photographs. So get a printer and show everyone what you can do with your computer. Considering what they do, printers are dirt cheap. I have 4, all of which I use from time to time, and it wont be long before I get another.
Paper costs just about as much as you would expect it to cost but the ink or toner for your printer can cost as much as half of what you paid for your piece of mechanical wizardry. The following are my observations on the printers I have and is not completely comprehensive. For what it is worth -

There are basically 2 types, lasers and inkjets.

Lasers are quiet, fast and give good quality monochrome prints. Colour lasers also give good quality printing but not good enough for photographs and they are still quite expensive. Lasers, however, are smelly, possibly toxic and are unpleasant to work within a confined space if a lot of printing is being done. The paper comes out warm and slightly curled.
Inkjets are great for high quality printing particularly for photographs.
Inkjets are noisy and slow especially if you select the best quality for your photographs but you can always go and have a coffee while it is printing.
I reckon I needed an inkjet and a mono laser so I can choose ccording to what is to be printed. The next problem is to decide whether to stick to the costly manufacturer’s own replacement inkjet and toner cartridges or go for compatible ones which are much more affordable. I have had problems with these. The inkjet cartridges don’t always work properly when they are replaced, cleaning the print heads doesn’t always work but leaving the printer switched off for a while, perhaps overnight seems to clear the problem. That doesn’t help with getting
the work done though. The compatible toners cartridges don’t always seem to print as many sheets either. It is difficult to be precise about this however. Based on this, I use the compatible ones for most printing but keep to the original ones for photographs. Hence the need for a second cheap inkjet printer.
If you do a lot of laser printing, the drum will eventually need replacing and I found that that it was more economical to buy a new printer because it comes with a toner cartridge as well and a new warrantee.

 

So we are up to 4 printers now.
For the future, I would like to have a colour laser printer which is connected wirelessly so that it can be located in another room in the house. Will have to save a few pennies for that however.

Next time I would like to talk about BACKUP. I bet you can’t wait for that!

 

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Contacts

Sallie Condy
- Adult Literacy & Numeracy Worker
Dunoon 01369 704669
Sallie.Condy@argyll-bute.gov.uk

Duncan Findlay
Volunteer Tutor and Editor
Lochgoilhead 01301 703260
d_u_findlay@hotmail.com

Rhona Grant
Community Based Adult Learning
Worker and Volunteer Tutor
Dunoon 01369 704669

That’s all for now. Thanks to all contributors and to graham@ogilviedesign.co.uk for the super cartoons.

 

Cheers and Enjoy,

 

ALN Development Worker

Lorn Community Learning Centre

MacCalls Terrace

Oban

PA34 4JF

Tel: 01631 562466  Fax : 01631 565265