Building Literacies In & Out of School
Effective literacy teaching and learning are key to helping students succeed both in and out of school. Literacy needs to be taught across content areas, and school-based tasks need to recognize and build on young people’s use of literacy in home, community, and peer settings. RFA’s literacy-focused work has included research on a range of settings, including early grades, high schools, alternative schools, and out-of-school settings. RFA has built knowledge about areas such as effective teacher professional development and literacy coaching, strategies to support struggling readers, adolescent literacy practices, and student engagement.
New Media, New Literacy: Learning from Youth in Philadelphia and Chester
Can you find a teenager today who doesn’t have a cell phone, iPod, laptop computer or digital camera? Teachers in classrooms everywhere are in a near-constant battle to pull students’ attention from gadgets – but they hold untapped potential as learning tools. What can we learn from students’ interest in technology and communication to enhance their literacy skills and improve their education? That was the question posed by Joslyn Young as she spent a year in residence at Research for Action as a Stoneleigh Junior Fellow studying the role of out-of-school media literacy and its effect on learning. Click here to access her portal of information on the role of media literacy and its effect on student learning.
Selected Activities
- Member, National Advisory Board of the Children’s Literacy Initiative – Philadelphia, PA
Selected Projects
This is a national, multi-site examination of how teachers, students, schools, districts and others educational entities develop, respond to and/or utilize new assessment tools. Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, RFA is working with a team of researchers to study how the new tools are utilized in the classroom; and how an array of supports, including professional development and new technology platforms, affect the implementation and utilization of the new tools.
The School District of Philadelphia operates 13 accelerated high schools to help get off-track students (e.g., over-age, under-credited youth) back on track to graduation. This project examines literacy teaching and learning at the accelerated high schools to support program implementation and professional development there and to inform broader District efforts to invigorate literacy teaching and learning throughout the system, particularly for the lowest performing students. This project is supported by the William Penn Foundation.
The William Penn Foundation funds Center for Literacy's Integrated Literacy Model (ILM) at West Philadelphia High School and commissioned RFA to conduct an implementation and impact evaluation of the model. This pilot project aims to improve high school graduation rates by addressing low literacy levels, one of the key risk factors for dropout. ILM literacy specialists provide intensive literacy instruction to 9th graders reading below grade level, as well as to similar students in an after-school Twilight program. An ILM literacy coach supports 9th grade teachers in integrating literacy across the content areas.
RFA evaluated the RCS/EBL initiative designed and implemented by a partnership of PEF and the School District of Philadelphia. Full-time Literacy Intern Teachers in the early grades work alongside senior teachers. RFA examined the impact of this initiative on classroom instruction and student achievement, and the success of the internship model in recruiting, training and retaining new teachers.
RFA is conducting a mixed-methods evaluation of the American Reading Company's ACTION 100 initiative in more than 20 elementary schools in Camden. The study will focus on ACTION 100's impact on student achievement.
