Projects and Workshops

LVQ carries out projects and organizes workshops as part of its mandate to support member groups, provide professional development, and advocate for literacy:

Current Projects

1) A Teaspoon of Literacy Makes the Medicine Go Down: Facilitating Access to Health and Social Services for People Living with Low Literacy: LVQ received provincial funding to host a conference on health literacy. The goal of the conference is to raise awareness within the health and social services sector of the impact of low literacy on an individual's ability to access health information and services. The conference will also introduce health and social service workers to literacy resources within Quebec's Anglophone sector to increase accessibility for people with low literacy. Literacy consultants will be trained in how to perform a literacy audit to assist the health and social service establishment to assess services and their facility to see how to make it more low-literacy friendly.

2) Measuring Non-Academic Progress in Adult Literacy Learners: LVQ received provincial funding to develop a tool to measure non-academic progress in adult literacy learners. Traditionally, educational progress and success has been measured using standardized, objective tests. However, these tests are problematic because they are poorly adapted to the community sector. In addition, these tests are inadequate for measuring intangible indicators of increased literacy levels. The goal of this project is to develop a tool that measures non-academic progress in literacy learners, which when combined with the academic indicators will provide a more complete picture of not only the student's success, but that of the program as well.

Past Projects

1) Speaking Up and Speaking Out: LVQ received funding to develop a provincial team of adult students who were trained in public speaking and are available to talk about their literacy journeys at public events, conferences, workshops, etc. For more information, or to request a speaker, visit the SUN team page here.

2) Lights! Camera! Action! LVQ received provincial funding to develop a literacy video. The video will be used by LVQ and member councils to recruit adult learners, train volunteer tutors, and raise public awareness about literacy. To view the video, click here.

3) Pass the message! LVQ received funding to create promotional materials and revise the LVQ website. This project enabled LVQ to produce promotional materials such as a pocket folder, a pamphlet, postcards, etc.

4) Best Practices in Tutor Training. LVQ received provincial funding to hold a round table on what works best when it comes to training tutors. The Best Practices in Tutor Training manual includes a recommended guideline for delivering the ideal basic tutor training workshop, material presented during the round table, best practices submitted by the members and a tutor training material resource section.

5) Literacy Resource Directory: Prevention Activities in Quebec- LVQ received provincial funding to create a resource directory that reflects prevention activities and initiatives in the Quebec English literacy community.

6) Best Practices - The objective of the Best Practices Project was to improve performance and results in key areas by capitalizing on the strengths of individual councils and systematically sharing Best Practices.

Workshops

LVQ organizes professional development workshops for member groups. Past workshops have included:

1) AlphaRoute: LVQ invited Nancy Friday of Alphaplus to lead a workshop on AlphaRoute, an online learning environment for adult literacy students in Canada. It has been in development, primarily in Ontario for the past 11 years. Over 14,000 literacy students have used AlphaRoute over the past 7 years.

AlphaRoute is not a curriculum. It is a collection of HTML and Macromedia Flash activities that were developed by literacy practitioners working in adult literacy programs based on the levels and interests of their students. Activities in AlphaRoute range from very basic mouse skill activities through the Ontario Literacy and Basic Skills levels 1-5. Level 5 would be the equivalent of about grade 8. Activities are Canadian-based and most, but not all have audio supported reading as an option. For more information about AlphaRoute, visit www.alpharoute.org

2) IALLS Survey: What do the Statistics Mean for Quebec? As literacy practitioners, we are often called upon to provide our various partners with statistics on the state of literacy in our province. Some of the statistics are hard to believe: 49% of Quebecers are scoring at levels one and two: what does that really mean? This 2-hour workshop will give literacy practitioners an outline of the 2003 ALLS (Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey) as the statistics pertain specifically to Quebec.

The presentation includes a brief background of the objectives of the IALS and ALL surveys, samples of questions that were included in the survey at various levels (1 through 4/5) and how Quebecers measured up in areas such as skills domains (prose, document literacy and numeracy), etc.

3) A-Z: Workshop on Emergent and Family Literacy