Invitation: To an Urban Sites Study Group

The Standards insist that instruction in reading, writing, speaking and listening is a shared responsibility within the school (CCSSI ELA Standards, 4).

The new Common Core State Standards affirm what teachers of literacy have long known: the skills of literacy are across the curriculum. This is a focus of the EMWP’s mini-grant proposal “Disciplinary Literacy and the Teaching of Writing.”
The proposal, submitted to the National Writing Project in early January, will be evaluated for funding in the next month. If funded, it will provide stipends and travel funding for a small group of teachers interested in disciplinary literacy in urban schools, to study the literacy of at least three disciplines: science, social studies, and a subject to be determined.


A primary goal of this grant would be to form a cohort of teachers in urban schools who are interested in school reform in literacy within their own and other urban schools. The National Writing Project has funded a Special Focus Group for urban schools for more than a decade, and this grant will be our first overture to this group.
The Urban Sites Network will have its bi-annual conference this spring, April 29-30, with Ernest Morrell as the keynote speaker (“Nurturing Student Writing: Navigating Urban Literacies”). To find out more about this conference, go to: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/events/496.

If you are interested in joining an Urban Sites study group, contact Bill Tucker at wtucker.emich.edu.