If you have the challenging task of coordinating literacy volunteers, you want the best information available on building a high-quality program along with practical suggestions on effective teaching. The Coordinator’s Guide to Help America Read offers both.

This guide is designed to help those who coordinate and lead other volunteers as they build and implement a high-quality service program in any setting. You may be a volunteer, school staff member, a community agency director, a youth group leader, or a church member who wants to ensure that the volunteers in your program work effectively with students.

Research has shown that to run an effective volunteer program, the coordinator must provide strong leadership, solid training, and careful monitoring. Fountas and Pinnell help to achieve these goals by offering:

• Specific training in ten ways to help children read and write
• Practical advice on recruiting, orienting, organizing, supervising, and advising volunteers
• An extended training program, detailing twelve training sessions
• A single-session training program for coordinators who must provide training quickly
• Thirty-nine transparencies, sample letters to parents, and a sample recognition certificate
• Specific instructions on how volunteers can connect with children’s families.

This guide offers suggestions for coordinating all aspects of a volunteer program and also for using the handbook, Help America Read, as the core resource for meaningful, effective training. Volunteers will find specific sets of guidelines and directions for working with children as well as specific tools they can use right away such as lists of good books, lists of words for letter and word study, handwriting charts, and spelling tools.