A Book Drive for TV

Galvanize your classroom! Alert your student council and service clubs! WTVP’s Ready To Learn program needs your help!

You already know that WTVP provides, free of charge, the best educational television programming to kids’ thirsty minds. Did you also know that, for the past 12 years, WTVP has been providing free books to Central Illinois kids who can’t afford them on their own? We’ve put nearly 70,000 books into the hands of local children, thereby encouraging literacy and sparking their love of reading and enthusiasm for learning.

But now the whole project is in jeopardy. National funding for the service has dried up and WTVP is left with no resources to purchase more books. The need for books, however, has not abated.

But you can help us keep it going!

Consider sponsoring a book drive for WTVP. It’s a great service project for a school club and a great literacy awareness lesson for your classroom. A book drive can be as simple as distributing a flyer around your school asking for new or gently used books for children ages 2 to 8 years old, collecting the books and then making arrangements to get them to WTVP. We do the rest! We’ll put a bookplate in every book recognizing your efforts and then distribute them to the children who so desperately need them. We’ll also recognize your school on air and online at wtvp.org.

Call WTVP Outreach Manager Janet McGrath, (309) 495-0593, for more information and to arrange delivery or pick up of your books. You can also [click here] for more information and sample flyers.

Thanks for your help. Our community’s young readers await your generosity.

Antiques Roadshow

Antiques Roadshow, one of WTVP’s most popular shows, is proud to announce its first official foray into education. The Antiques Roadshow Teacher’s Guide offers middle school teachers new ways to get students excited and engaged in history, geography, world culture, civics, and a range of other topics. The Guide is available online and can be downloaded as a PDF.

Using objects appraised on Antiques Roadshow, this new area of the Roadshow Web site illustrates how to integrate the study of artifacts and objects into classroom curricula and lists related NCSS standards. Questions, activities, and other resources invite students to take a closer look at the “things” people have made and used throughout history as a window through which they can glimpse the people and events of the past, present, and even the future.

Antiques Roadshow - which airs on Mondays at 7 p.m. and again on Sundays at 6 p.m.—will feature visits to Mobile, Salt Lake City, Milwaukee, and Portland this fall along with five special editions: “Jackpot” on Oct. 27, “Politically Collect” on Nov. 3, “Trash to Treasure” on Dec. 15, “Roadshow Remembers” on Dec. 22, and “Wild Things” on Dec. 29.