Sage Youth Workbooks

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Sage Youth Workbooks

The staff and volunteers at Sage Youth have written twenty-two workbooks in collaboration with the Excellence in Literacy Foundation. These materials cover verbal, phonetic, comprehension, writing, employability, leadership and life-skills. We decided to create our own materials for a number of reasons:

1. The workbooks are not given a specific grade level. Many of our teenage students who read at a first, second or third grade levels are embarrassed when their materials are labelled as being geared towards children of elementary-school age. Instead, we have titled the first (grades one to two) level, "PROMISE"; the second (grades two to three), "ACHIEVEMENT"; the third (grades three to four), "EXCELLENCE".
2. Many of the materials available on the market are created in the United States. Our books have a strong Canadian theme.
3. A large percentage of our students are of colour, new Canadian, from financially disadvantaged families, from single parent homes and many face a number of physical and developmental challenges. We have tried to make our workbooks as inclusive as possible to all of our students.
4. Our students often describe the majority of exercise books and workbooks on the market as being dreadfully boring. We have tried to make these materials as pertinent to their lives as possible in a way that will hopefully capture their interest.
5. Many of the stories have a strong ethical lesson.
6. Recent testing has shown that Canadian children in the school system may be able to read words, but that their comprehension skills are very low. The questions following each story encourage the children to develop their analytical skills. We hope that they will simply get our students “in the habit” of being readers with strong comprehension skills.
7. Our literacy in employability, leadership, role model and life skills materials help provide our students with the tools they need to become future nation builders.

There is no question that our classrooms are unique as are our style and approach to teaching the whole child. We hope that our exercise books will reflect our philosophy!

For information on obtaining these workbooks, please visit www.excellenceinliteracy.org.