Our Impact
Teacher-Centered Literacy Action Plans
In the press
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$5 Million Grant Will Help Missouri K-12 Students with Language, Literacy
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Schools Selected to Participate in State’s $18 Million Literacy Development Grant Program
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$5.1 Million Grant Will Fund UMSL Literacy Education Research
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How a team of experts at UMSL is helping to build a culture of literacy in schools across the St. Louis area
Testimonials
“This has been my favorite year of teaching writing yet! Not only do my students LOVE our writing time, but they are reading complex text sets and making claims in their writing!”
— Sara Worsfold, 3rd grade teacher Faxon Elementary
“As a non-ELA teacher, I entered this work with some fear and no confidence. Now, I have confidence in myself as a content literacy teacher. My definition of literacy has changed every time I come to this kind of high-quality PD. Everything we do adds to my confidence and to my tools. Experiencing strategies as a learner has strengthened my ability to teach.”
— Andrew Corrao, CTE teacher Northeast High School
“In working through drafting a building-wide definition of literacy, we came to understand this would be a multi-year process. Our goal is to have a definition all staff not only agrees with but understands how their courses are reflected in it. We want them to ‘see themselves’ in the definition.”
— Ronda Scott, Principal Truman High School
Show Me Literacies Summer Launch
Our collaboration with grant schools began with a week of learning together in the summer of 2021. Across the state, we worked to build a professional learning community, establish a culture of reading, writing, and inquiry, and cultivate teacher leadership and intentional use of instructional strategies.
“Having source-based, real-world material to go off of has…helped students go deeper into their conversations to make them more meaningful.”
Middle School Science Teacher
“[During these lessons], engagement is way up, interest is way up, their on-task behavior’s way up. I actually get to be more monitoring-process instead of monitoring-behavior.”
Middle School ELA teacher
Source-Based Argument
The professional learning opportunities we offer are ongoing (not just in the summer). Here’s what teachers are saying about exploring inquiry-based reading and source-based writing in collaboration with the National Writing Project.
Writing Institute Testimonial:
Another professional learning opportunity we offer is the Writing Institute, or Summer Institute for those who take it in the summer. The Writing Institute offers participants a rich opportunity to grow as a writer and as a teacher of writing. Participants study current theory and research on the teaching of writing, demonstrate their teaching practices for feedback, apply what they learn to their educational setting, and build their writing identity through writing, revising, and preparing their own writing for in-house publication.