This lemon’s no drop In the bucket! That's because volunteers, administrators, and students at the local Coconino County Literacy Center in Arizona, recently put the squeeze on Reading Horizons’ Lemons for Literacy program and now have more than $5000 in free reading software, direct instruction materials, and training.
Statistically we know that:
- 42 million adult Americans can’t read; 50 million recognize so few printed words they are limited to a 4th or 5th grade reading level.
- Nearly half of all functionally illiterate adults live in poverty; they are less likely to find employment than their more literate counterparts and are more likely to require public assistance.
- Annual health care costs for people with average literacy skills are about $3,000; for those at the lowest literacy level the cost is about $13,000.
- And because nearly 70 percent of incarcerated adults are functionally illiterate, many states, find they can use the illiteracy rate to calculate future prison needs.
That’s why Reading Horizons launched Lemons for Literacy in February 2009. Primarily our goal is to catch struggling readers early with a proven reading system that uses an intensive, explicit, systematic phonics approach to learning to read.
Lemons for Literacy has two goals:
1. To help cure illiteracy by providing free literacy materials to people in need.
2. To provide free reading education for teachers wherever possible.
Schools who are interested in participating should apply for the program on the Reading Horizons' website. Once a school is selected, parents, students, and teachers go to the Lemons for Literacy website page and play a game filling glasses with lemonade. Once all of the glasses are filled, the school receives free online reading help and materials.
So far, almost 400,000 ounces of virtual lemonade has been squeezed – that’s 12,500 gallons of juice – resulting in more than $20,000 in reading help.
Now that’s a sweet deal.
Check out Lemons for Literacy and let us know what you think!