Often those who choose to seek assistance through a literacy program feel a sense of embarrassment and thus displaying encouraging posters can show that they are not alone and should indeed feel a sense of pride in the fact that they took the initiative to take in important step in make a positive change their lives. Create imagery with former clients and/or ask for volunteers to participate in a photo shoot. Include, for example, a smiling individual at a work station with a tutor holding a book in his hands. You can create your literary posters in a graphics program like Photoshop, GIMP, ArtRage or for a basic poser design in a more user friendly program such as Microsoft Paint.
Creating posters, study sheets or bulletins that offer helpful reminders on key concepts is another idea to try in your facility's work stations. A key reminder could involve, for instance, examples of past tense/present tense words, a list of verbs, nouns, adjectives as well as conjunctions and other writing constructs. You want to create a series of posters or bulletins that you can change as students advance in their studies to new concepts. Again, you can create your posters, study sheets and bulletins in a graphics program or you can use a word processing program like Word or Open Office to print out your materials for placement on walls inside cubicles or on walls next to study stations.
You can also look for posters of famous people who are involved in promoting literacy and reading to young and old. You can also include famous quotes that speak to the importance of trying to better yourself, whatever stage of life one is at. For example, include a quote like Mark Twain's "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." Or order a series of posters from the "Get Caught Reading" project, which includes images of celebrities and athletes reading.