Volunteer Early Literacy Supports in Our Schools!
The Enhanced Alphabet Knowledge (EAK) routine is a 1-on-1 mentoring routine where volunteers work with kindergarten and 1st-grade students. This routine is 15-20 minutes long and works through:
- Letter Recognition & Identification: Children learn to recognize and identify individual letters.
- Letter-Sound Correspondence: Children associate letter names with their corresponding sounds.
- Letter Production: Children practice writing or forming the letters.
During this routine, volunteers only work on one letter in both the upper case and lower case form.
Early Literacy Mentor Volunteer!
This program is possible thanks to the volunteers who come in weekly to administer the program! Volunteers work 1-on-1 with multiple students each day working on the various letters.
No teaching background is necessary! For this program to work, each student needs to receive the same routine for each letter no matter the volunteer they are working with! For this, volunteers are trained on how to use a scripted program developed by our school systems. That means any volunteer could learn how to become a great Early Literacy Mentor!
The estimated time commitment is 3 hours a week during the school day.
Want to learn more about the EAK Program or how to be an Early Literacy Mentor? Contact our office today at shavaun@unitedwaylakeshore.org or call (231) 332-4016.
Our School Partners:
Special Thanks to Our Supporting Partners:
The Retired & Senior Volunteer Program Members have helped coordinate, provide feedback, and administer the program!
This program has funded support thanks to the Community Foundation for Muskegon County!
The Muskegon Area Intermediate School District has provided the expertise knowledge and overall program fundamentals to train our volunteers and equip them with the necessary skills to make this program possible!
This program started as a pilot after the Livability Lab in 2022. Thanks to a set group of dedicated volunteers and an advisory committee this program has grown over the last two years to work with over 100 students in our community.
