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Scrabble Tournament – A Spellbinding Success!
Our 2nd Annual Scrabble Tournament was held Tuesday, April 20th at Assumption College. This Annual event has
become our signature fundraising event. It combines our literacy mission with a fun and exciting way to raise funds for our
organization.
Winning for the second consecutive year was UnumProvident with a combined three round score of 3,587. Coming
in at second place, the Worcester Public Library scored 3,131 and third place was a team from Assumption College with a score
of 3,050.
This year brought even more participation with our students and tutors. We had one team made up solely of
our tutors and students and many of our active tutors volunteered as judges,
Over $3,900 was raised for LVGW with the help of a number of corporate teams and sponsors including Assumption
College, UnumProvident, BankNorth, Fallon Community Health Care, Umass Memorial Healthcare, Verizon, Worcester State College,
the Worcester Credit Union, Worcester Magazine, Worcester Public Library and Providence and Worcester Railroad Company.
A special acknowledgment must be made to Assumption College who underwrote most of the costs of the event.
Over the last year, Assumption College has partnered with us in improving our services by building our computer lab and providing
funds for our library.
Congratulations New ESL Tutors
Responding to the demands of our English as a Second Language waitlist, we held two trainings in the past
several months.
In early Spring, Kathy Henderson led our workshop that graduated 11 new tutors. These tutors included: Rebecca
Alvarez, Dianna Aquafresca, Susan Arraje, Mary-Claire Conbow, Tom Hodgdon, Ramla Jafferji, Marcia Leonard, Sorcha O’Sullivan-Murphy,
Ramon Salas, Jim Sasena, and Gayle Weiss.
Sherry Glatefelter returned to teach another ESL workshop that graduated 15 new tutors. These tutors included:
Lynn Anderson, Helen Bartucca, Amy Cohen, Katie Donovan, Harvey Fenigsohn, Catherine Fox, Peter Freshman, Mona Heffernan,
Roger Isabelle, Kristin LaCroix, Hilary Ledebuhr, Carol Pellegrino, Diana Rinaldo, Yvonne Vucica, and Julie Zito.
Congratulations to Sherry Glatefelter on her recent graduation from Clark University. Sherry has worked hard
toward her Master’s Degree in Education and we are thrilled that she shares her knowledge with us and our new tutors!
Silent Auction – Saturday, November 20th, 5-8pm
In the past two years, Literacy Volunteers of Greater Worcester has expanded our services by over 100%. With
such growth, comes additional need for funding to help support our students and tutors.
To help fund our growth, LVGW will hold our first ever Silent Auction Fundraiser. The Silent Auction will
be held on Saturday, November 20th from 5-8 pm at Club Maxine’s located on the 4th floor of Maxwell Silverman’s
Restaurant. The auction will be held as part of a cocktail reception. The evening promises to be one filled with lots of great
items on which to bid, music, food and drink.
Planning a Silent Auction requires a tremendous amount of preparation and planning. The first step is obtaining
items to auction. Our Board of Directors is actively looking to area businesses to donate items to auction off.
We ask tutors and students to think creatively in helping us obtain items to auction off. Do you or your student
have a special talent? Can you donate a theme basket (wine, cooking, gardening are just some ideas). We will also need volunteers
the night of event. If you or your student is willing to participate please give us a call!
**Auction Item Ideas**
Every business receives a number solicitation each month for donated items. Each donation is tax-deductible
for the business and many business owners and managers have a quota each month of how much they will donate.
The competition for donated items is tight. Some of the items on our list include:
$25-$100 gift certificates to restaurants, spas, flower shops,
Quilts and arts & crafts
Themed Gift baskets – wine, books, gardening, & cooking
Museum, Gym, Amusements park, Golf , and Tour passes
Tickets to pro sports teams & team
The Sally E. Moore Award and Student of the Year
As part of the festivities surrounding the Silent Auction on November 20th, we will also announce the winners
of our Student and Tutor of the Year Award. This award was first granted last year at our 30th Anniversary Gala at Tuckerman
Hall. This year, the honorees will receive it at our Silent Auction Cocktail Party.
Last year, Nancy Walsh was awarded the Sally E. Moore award for her excellent service to Literacy Volunteers.
Nancy has volunteered as both a tutor and board member.
Our Student of the Year in 2003-2004 was Isaac Hanna. Isaac has worked with his tutor Velma Blanchard since
July 2002. He is an outstanding student who is enthusiastic and always curious.
Think about nominating your student or tutor for these awards. We believe everyone in our organization brings
something special but this is a chance to highlight the hard work of two individuals. Nominations are due October 15th. We
will notify the winners by November 1st so that they will have the opportunity to attend the cocktail reception.
BEST PLUS, a New Assessment Tool for ESL Students!
The Massachusetts Department of Education has introduced a new assessment tool for all English as a Second
Language students. We will be required to assess all current students using this new assessment tool at the beginning of the
fiscal year and at the end. Best Plus is a computer generated assessment that is a much better tool for evaluation than the
ESLOA, our current assessment tool. ESL students have been very enthusiastic in their reviews of this assessment.
Both Paris and Allison spent a day in training to be certified assessors. They will be completing the last
part of the training during August and will be ready to begin the process of scheduling appointments with all students and
tutors in September and October.
The Department of Education requires that all students be both pre-assessed and post-assessed. We are hopeful
that this process will be helpful for our organization as it will allow us to quantify the educational gains our students
make each year.
Lesson Idea: Cloze Activities
Cloze activities are those that include sentences or paragraphs with missing words. A cloze sentence might be missing all
the verbs or adjectives. This is a great activity for ESL or BR students while they are learning a set of words such as colors,
word patterns or parts of speech. You may create a cloze sentence by using a short paragraph that your student has read or
one that they have listened to (on tape or by you reading it out loud).
A disappearing cloze activity is one that starts as a complete
paragraph or quote and you gradually erase or cover a few words at a time and the student
recalls what words were there. You continue to erase every 3rd word or 7th word until the student has memorized the entire
paragraph and can write it on his/her own. Cloze activites can be created by you, the tutor, found in Hands on English (available
in our office) or by a Cloze Creator on http://www.edhelper.com/cloze.htm
Try this activity with your student and let us know how it worked for you!
More Lesson Ideas...
Are you looking for some new ideas for your student? Consider the following:Thematic Notebook – If your
student has a hobby or interest, this may be a great lesson plan for you! Thematic Notebooks can create various lessons, including
writing, listening, conversation, reading and hands-on activities. A good example is Gardening. If your student likes to garden,
have him/her share with you his/her gardening experiences, hopes and need for more information. Many students have interests
that we don’t know about. Ask your student today, "What do you like to do in your free time?" This will lead to a great
lesson that can continue over weeks or months. Touch on it a little each week through a journal complete with articles, pictures,
questions & answers, etc. Using Everyday Materials to Develop Basic Literacy Skills – If you and
your student are tired of books or you are stuck in a rut of the same old lessons consider throwing some "realia" into the
mix! Realia is anything that is real or everyday. Newspaper sale flyers and coupons are great examples. Realia can liven up
your lesson because they are tangible items that your student can relate to for their everyday lives. Songs, videos and photos
(or magazine pictures) are great types of realia as well. There are three kinds of learners: Auditory, Visual and Kinesthetic/Tactile.
This packet helps you to round out your lessons to reach your student’s every need.
If you want more information on either of these lesson ideas just e-mail or call Paris for the information.
Mail@lvgw.org or 508-754-8056.
Literacy Volunteers of Greater Worcester — Getting the Word Out!
This summer has been a busy one for the office. Thanks to Laurie Hogan who is active in Shrewsbury local access
television, we produced a half an hour cable show about Literacy Volunteers. The program is still in the editing phase, but
we will soon air. This show will be a great tool to not only help with recruiting tutors, but also students.
The format of the show is a simple round table discussion. Allison Budds acted as the moderator as Paris Baillie,
Board Member Nancy Walsh, Basic Literacy tutor Lynette Johnson and ESL tutor Charlie Vilandre discussed their roles in our
organization.
We would like to thank Charlie and Lynnette for their willingness to put themselves out there and speak about
the work they do with their students. A special thanks goes to Laurie Hogan who volunteered to produce this program.
A Message from the President:
As we begin our new fiscal year, I feel it is important to let you know some of the agenda items your board is working
on during the next months. First, I want to welcome Kathy Gagne and Andrea Cosmopoulos to the board. Kathy and Andrea bring
a great deal of experience and expertise to LVGW and will have a major positive impact on our organization.
We have reconciled the financial statements for fiscal year 2004 and they show we have a small reserve as we begin fiscal
year 2005. We all need to spread the word regarding LVGW. We want to make more people aware of our organization, raise more
funds and be able to service more students.
For the past two months, your board has been working on our annual fundraiser scheduled for November 20th. This
is THE event that not only will bring in much needed funds, but also make more people aware of LVGW and hopefully will want
to become involved.
The board is also working to refine our mission statement and a long-term strategy. We feel this is important
as we seek funding from an ever far reaching pool.
Thank you for your time and efforts. If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact our office.
- Michael Mills
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