Partners in Improving Secondary Literacy

Lalitha Vasudevan Associate, Secondary Literacy

 

It's official! Cornerstone has been awarded a planning grant from the Carnegie Corporation to support a design team that will spend a year exploring the terrain of literacy in middle and secondary education.

Misunderstood: A brief overview of literacy teaching and learning in the lives of adolescents
Adolescent literacy is a relatively new area of scholarly inquiry; however, the literacy learning of adolescents has been of growing concern and exploration by practitioners for much longer. Recent approaches to addressing and improving the literacy instruction in middle and secondary schools have run the gamut from increased emphasis on "the basics," that includes ever more regimentation of instruction and evaluation, to innovative learning approaches that integrate the most cutting edge technologies with recent theories of literacy. Further complicating the literacy learning of adolescents are the social issues that blossom in this stage of life and that are ever present in the lives of adolescents, i.e. maturation, socialization, etc. The fact remains, however, adolescents' needs as literacy learners, by and large, are not being met by schools as reflected in falling test scores on literacy-based assessments, drop-out rates, and the growing gap in literacy learning across gender and race. The "fourth grade dip" that is often written about refers to the sharp decrease in test scores of fourth graders in comparison to younger children.

So, what does this mean for Cornerstone?
Over the next year, members of the Cornerstone staff, including Ellin Keene and Lalitha Vasudevan, will work alongside scholars and practitioners in the field of secondary literacy to explore questions that persist about extending literacy instruction beyond the early years. By undertaking this endeavor, Cornerstone's goal is to develop a model for literacy learning across secondary settings that includes a plan for professional development for teachers of adolescents. One of the key points of inquiry will be to delve deeply into what it means to actively teach literacy across the content areas, beyond fourth grade. The design team will also examine existing models of professional development and support for teachers of adolescents. And finally, the design team will consider the range of approaches to and critiques of literacy teaching and learning in secondary settings in order to inform our own evolving model. This yearlong study and design also presents the opportunity for the Cornerstone network to engage in dialogue about the issues of literacy beyond the early years, that is a topic of relevance to many of our schools.

In conjunction with this announcement, we are also launching a regular newsletter feature that will spotlight resources - including articles, websites, and other materials and event notices - that are germane to this dialogue. To kick things off, check out the following links that offer slightly different slants on the topic of adolescent literacy:

Focus on Adolescent Literacy (from the International Reading Association)
http://www.reading.org/focus/adolescent.html
In this brief, the IRA offers an overview of adolescent literacy resources that includes a link to a position statement that they issued on the subject in 1999.

Reading Online
http://www.readingonline.org/
This is an online journal of K-12 practice and research related to literacy, published by the IRA. Here, you'll find a range of articles and online and print-based resources to use in your practice, as well as examples of how teachers are engaging in creative literacy instruction across grade levels and across subjects.