MANY YELL FOUNDATION GRANTS WILL HELP FUND BOOKS

Books -- reading, receiving and even making them was the focus of many of the grants awarded by the YELL Foundation Tuesday.

YELL, an acronym for Youth Education Literacy and Learning, awarded grants totaling $35,299.50. The money was raised through the sale of a special edition of the Southeast Missourian in September and by other fund-raising efforts of the YELL Foundation.

The largest grant, $27,000, went to the Southeast Missourian's Newspaper in Education program, which provides newspapers to classrooms throughout the area. The rest of the money was awarded to teachers and educators, libraries and community groups involved in reading development. Much of that will go directly to buying books."We're going to purchase more levels of books," Gerald Landewee said of the $200 Oak Ridge Elementary received to help fund an early literacy program for kindergarten through third grade.

There is such a variety of reading levels for these early readers that it can be difficult having enough materials to fill every student's needs, said Landewee. But it is important to do so so each student experiences success at reading, he said.

Early literacy programs that involve buying multiple copies of books for reading groups were funded at Blanchard Elementary and Jefferson Elementary schools in Cape Girardeau. Each of those programs received grants of $200.

Cindy Halter of Jefferson said the money will buy multiple copies of small books for reading groups. "We look for books that students can read and that they will be interested in so they will want to read," she said.

Mary Ann Lewis, a first-grade teacher at Blanchard, said the reading groups there are ability-based and generally students read a different book each day. "When you need multiple copies of those, it can run into money," she said.

Multiple copies of books also will be purchased with the $600 Cape Girardeau Central High School received. These books will be discussed at a book club for students, staff and the community."When we leave our monthly discussions, we all feel really smart," Julia Jorgensen, the Central librarian, said of the club, which discusses a different book at each meeting. "We talk about the book on diverse levels, and students get to interact in an adult manner."She also thinks it is good for students to see that teachers and other adults enjoy reading and talking about books.

Last year the club discussed John Grisham's "Street Lawyer" and Frank McCort's "Angela's Ashes." The next meeting of the club will be Dec. 7, when the discussion will focus on "Ellen Foster" by Kaye Gibbons. Jorgensen said the meeting is open to the public.

In handing out the awards, Yell Foundation board member Nancy Jernigan said several grants went to creative, innovative approaches to literacy. One of those was Shutterbugs, a program at Jefferson School that received a grant for $280.40.

Rhonda Dunham, who wrote the grant request, said the Jefferson program will put disposable cameras into the hands of students, who will use the pictures to create their own books. The students mount the pictures in a binder, then write stories or poetry under each picture."The program lets each student succeed at his or her own level," she said.

Jernigan, executive director of the Area Wide United Way, said the process of awarding grants is difficult because there are always more requests than money to give away. But she said the hope is that more funds will be available as the YELL Foundation holds more fund raisers such as the Southeast Missouri banner featuring businesses and organizations that appears on the paper's front page each Saturday and a corporate spelling bee planned for the spring.