Learning through Books, Media and Technology

ARTICLES THIS ISSUE:

1996 Administrative Leadership Award for Library Media Services

1996 President's Award Winner

1996 Technology Award

Editorial: Learning Comes in Many Languages

From Cave Writing to Computers

A Theme's the Thing

Primary Languages, Primary sources on the Internet

Update on a Model Library Media Program

Limited? There Are No Limits

A Bilingual Student Population

Cooking Their Way to Literacy

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Cooking Their Way to Literacy

Lewis Junior High

In addition to her regular library media responsibilities, Wendy Gay of Lewis Junior High sponsors Mecha, a club for 250 students of Mexican descent, and MAC (Multicultural Asian Club), a group of 45 students from various Asian backgrounds. To raise funds for field trips, sweatshirts, and parties, Wendy and the Mac club designed, wrote, and published a beautifully designed, mouth-wateringly rendered Asian Cuisine, a recipe book, copies of which sell for $5 each.

Lewis Junior High School MAC students present their Asian cuisne cookbook.

To produce the cookbook, students had to translate recipes from the language spoken at home into written English and write the instructions in a recipe language style that readers can easily follow. To learn recipe format, students read innumerable cookbooks and searched the Internet for further examples.

While the students actually produced the cookbooks, Wendy read every recipe for clarity and an expert cook read them for accuracy. A good thing, too. "We eliminated one recipe that called for 50 cups of sugar!" chuckled Wendy. The students obtained all the recipes from their families, typed them on a computer using a format designed by the club, edited them, did the art work, designed and laminated the covers, and bound the books using a spiral binding machine.

The project was so successful and so much fun that Wendy, collaborating with other staff members, is already planning a Mexican cookbook, to be followed by an African American volume, a European volume, and maybe more.

• Lewis Junior High (Grades 7-9; enrollment 928)
  5170 Greenbrier Avenue, San Diego 92120; (619) 583-3233
  Trish Harris, Principal
  Wendy Gay, Library Media Teacher
  San Diego Unified School District