The Hood Children's Literacy Project

Funded by a three-year grant from the Hood Foundation, The Hood Children's Literacy Project provides professional development for teachers in the selected schools, literacy materials to enrich the schools' resources, trained literacy tutors to work within the classrooms, and research initiatives to investigate new models for classroom practices to strengthen literacy.

The Hood Children's Literacy Project is currently working in partnership with three local schools: the Rodney J. Hardy and the Thompson Elementary Schools in Arlington, and the Harrington Elementary School in Cambridge. Each school has a planning group made up of teachers from the school as well as faculty and staff of the Hood Project that guides the progress of the project and shapes the details to suit the individual school.

The Hood Children's Literacy Project draws together and supports a number of literacy initiatives at Lesley University in order to:

• investigate early literacy development and its relation to later literacy learning throughout the school years;
• build partnerships between local schools and Lesley University that support continual professional development and improved preparation of teachers;
• develop strategies for increasing literacy for those children who may experience early school failure;
• develop new approaches to support literacy in families where English is not a first language;
• collaborate with teachers in defining new literacy practices appropriate to an increasingly diverse and technological society; and
• serve as a catalyst for change in classroom practices, educational standards, and policy mandates that relate to family literacy.

Research sponsored by the Project will enhance our understanding of:

• how children acquire literacy;
• how classroom environments and teaching practices foster literacy development;
• how families support and engage in literacy practices;
• how the needs of students whose first language is not English are best met and what new approaches are required to ensure that these children succeed;
• how new technologies serve literacy learning;
• what skills teachers entering the field require and how teachers maintain and renew professional competencies; and
• what the best means are to support the continuous professional development of teachers.

Professional Development

The Hood Project extends the scope of partnerships now existing between Lesley University and local schools by building upon the relationships established through the Reading Recovery Project, the Early Literacy Learning Initiative (ELLI), the Professional Development Schools, and other collaborations. Lesley University faculty work with the teachers in the elementary schools, and support the professional development of teachers through several channels including: ELLI training, release time for teachers to plan within teams and visit other sites, inservice workshops, and participation in the Literacy Institutes and Forums.

Currents in Literacy

Currents in Literacy, a twice yearly publication, includes articles by noted literacy experts, Lesley faculty, teachers from the Hood Project schools, Lesley graduate students, and others working in the field of literacy. Each issue includes examples of teacher-research, discussion of classroom practices, reviews of children's books as well as professional texts, and examples of children's writing. The publication is disseminated to the Lesley community, the Hood Project school communities, teachers and administrators throughout eastern Massachusetts, and others interested in literacy issues.

To find out about submission guidelines please contact: Editor, Ellyn Ruthstrom, Hood Children's Literacy Project, Lesley College, 29 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-349-8226; eruthstr@mail.lesley.edu.

Literacy Forums

The Hood Project sponsors a series of forums that enable Lesley University faculty and students to meet with practicing teachers, specialists, administrators, invited scholars, and literacy experts. The Forums are opportunities to pose study questions and engage in dialogue to generate ideas for research activities and new practices to be undertaken by the Hood Project.

At the first Literacy Forum in November 1997, national researcher Richard Allington spoke to an enthusiastic group of local teachers about the effectiveness of different early literacy techniques and the controversies behind them. Noted researcher and author Jim Cummins spoke at the second Literacy Forum in April 1998 about the importance of second language acquisition and linguistic diversity.

Jim Cummins at the Second Hood Literacy Forum in April 1998.

During the second year of the project, we held three Literacy Forums. Gay Su Pinnell spoke on "The Lessons of ELLI and Reading Recovery" in the fall of 1998. In Spring 1999, Katie Johnson presented an afternoon on "Reading Into Writing: The Treasure Hunt for Forms and Styles" and Theresa Perry spoke to a full Alumni Hall about "African-American Language, Literature, and Literacy." The Perry lecture was cosponsored with the Massachusetts Department of Education and the Lesley University Center for Academic Achievement.

Looking ahead to the fall of 1999, we will again hold two forums on the Lesley campus. The first Forum in September will be with Ellin Keene, author of Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader's Workshop. And in November, Ralph Fletcher will discuss his techniques for teaching writing.

Innovative Research

The Hood Project develops innovative research and new models for best practices which take into account the variety of social, cultural, economic, familial, and linguistic factors affecting children's literacy development. The Project actively involves faculty, teachers, administrators, families, and policy planners in these efforts.

Collaborative investigations will occur in the classrooms of designated schools. The model being used centers on the concept of teacher as researcher, an inquiry-based model where teachers themselves become the principal investigators of experiments in their classrooms. This design ensures that theory is relevant to practice, allowing the teacher to make observations, engage in pilot experimentation, and document findings.

A pilot project using AlphaSmart keyboards was initiated in spring 1998 by fifth grade teacher Barbara Siegel at the Hardy School. AlphaSmart keyboards are relatively inexpensive (less than $250) and lightweight (two pounds); they run on AA or NiCad rechargeable batteries and function like a work processor. They can store eight files of varying sizes, and are able to download to both Macs and PCs. The portability of the keyboards make them excellent tools to take outside the classroom for field work and they do not take up as much space as conventional computer equipment.