TEPF’s Bridging the Literacy Gap

The Cause

The Educational Partnership Foundation (TEPF) is honoured to present our Idea: Bridging the Literacy Gap, which promotes literacy and strengthens Alberta’s existing education reading programs. The first arm of our Idea is Reading… Give it a Shot!, which empowers children to record the minutes they read to earn literacy collector cards series, eventually working to earn a full set of 24 cards in each series. Our one-of-a-kind cards help students develop their literacy skills and support our learning outcomes by using cross-curricular lesson plans as part of our TEPF Teacher Toolkit. The second arm of the Idea is Books for Kids, which supplies books to children in underserved communities across the province. The differentiator of this part of our Idea is that the students involved are not just given any book—they choose their own from a broad selection, and it is theirs to take home, which elevates their desire to read. In many cases, we learn that a book provided through our program has become the first the child has ever owned. Participation in this program is free for schools and can be seamlessly implemented at any time during the school year.

Who Will it Benefit?

With funding of $30,000, our Idea will benefit an additional 1,200 students from Kindergarten to Grade 6. It will also benefit the teachers who register to implement the Idea as it provides a cross-curricular resource and can be worked into other parts of an overall lesson plan (e.x., one set of collector cards, Canadian Wildlife, therefore a teacher can use this to support literacy goals and connect it to Science outcomes.)

We work with the Ministry of Education, individual school authorities, Home School Network, Calgary Police Youth Foundation and Integrated School Support Programs to identify high needs schools in disadvantaged communities in and around Calgary. Field Law has the option to be involved in supporting the selection of the specific school(s) who will benefit from the Idea.

Since our literacy program started in 1995, we have engaged over 1,000,000 children from marginalized communities and First Nations across Alberta. With funding from Field Law, we can increase our reach and impact.