Title of Effective Practice: - California Postsecondary Education ...

Direct Connection to Policy Area 2 of The Illinois Commitment
Preparing Teachers to Teach Literacy
University of Illinois - Chicago
What issue or need is addressed by the effective practice?
Literacy in math and science requires a different approach to reading and writing than does literacy in an area
such as history. Traditionally students in grades 4 -12 have not been prepared to address these differences.
Description of the effective practice:
A team of UIC College of Liberal Arts and Sciences historians, scientists and mathematicians and College of
Education literacy experts are meeting monthly to determine how to best prepare pre-service teachers to deal
with Chicago’s serious literacy problems. The team is identifying middle and high school students’ reading and
writing requirements that are part of the secondary school curricula. Their goal is to create discipline-based
strategies to help students meet those requirements. Strategies created will be field- tested in public school
classrooms with input from Chicago Public School teachers. A three year timeline has been established by the
Carnegie Corporation, which has granted funding for the project.
How does this practice achieve sustainability?
UIC will support the initiative with a three-year $100,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York
which was awarded to support ongoing efforts to improve adolescent literacy nationally and locally.
What are the results/measurable outcomes?
The grant builds on the UIC College of Education’s existing emphasis on literacy in Chicago schools. Its
principal investigator created the Framework for Literacy, adopted by the Chicago Public Schools and now
implemented in 600 Chicago schools, with 26,000 teachers, serving 437,000 students annually. It has also been
implemented by hundreds of schools across the nation.
Contact Information
Name: Margaret Grosch
Email: mmgrosch@uic.edu
Phone: (312) 413-3461
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