Literacy

We believe in the power of story. When listening to an incredibly captivating story – feeling fully immersed – communication skills, empathy, and understanding can grow. When telling your own story, you have an opportunity to share your perspective, while also extending your own courage, confidence, and vulnerability. Students become storytellers using structures and strategies to create, write, and speak about fictional and nonfictional places.

How does literacy expand students’ understanding of the world? Literacy empowerment…

• Introduces and builds on strong foundational skills of decoding, comprehension, fluency, and word study
• Gives a voice to students through storytelling, persuasive thinking, and perspective-taking
• Encourages risk-taking and nimble use of strategies
• Calls for active listening and considering critical feedback
• Fosters curious researching and investigations

PBS partners with the Reading and Writing Project out of Columbia University’s Teachers College for direction and inspiration in leading students to literacy. The Project’s mission is to “help young people become avid and skilled readers, writers, and inquirers.” The work of the Project is research-driven and based on shoulder-to-shoulder work with students, educators, and administrators; it has produced “state-of-the-art tools and methods for teaching reading and writing, for using performance assessments and learning progressions to accelerate progress, and for literacy-rich content-area instruction.”