What Is the Research Base for the San Diego Striving Readers’ Project
The project developed out of a longitudinal study into the literacy learning of adolescents in New Zealand (McDonald & Thornley, 2004, 2005; Thornley & McDonald, 2002) and from our experiences in using the initial findings from this study in San Diego schools from 2003 to 2005. When we began working together, San Diego Unified was using a literature-based literacy instructional approach for struggling adolescents that didn’t really help students in the content areas. Our response was to use the instructional approaches developed from the New Zealand work to introduce Tag Heuer Replica literacy instruction using content area texts in content area classes. It seemed obvious to build on this when the opportunity to apply for a Striving Readers grant arose.
Although it might seem odd to use a literacy approach developed in New Zealand for a project in the United States, we believe there is much to be learned from the literacy experiences of New Zealand’s adolescents. Although these students perform very well in international literacy assessments, the spread of their achievement is among the widest of any participating country. This unusual pattern of achievement is reflected in our longitudinal study where 100 young people from five schools were tracked during their high school years. Through annual interviews, surveys, and assessments, we compared what very able students told us about literacy Tag Heuer Carrera Replica with students whose success was relatively modest and with students who struggled. This enabled us to describe the literacy skills and knowledge that we believe lead to academic success across the curriculum.
We see our longitudinal study as distinctive in the field of adolescent literacy research because it is one of the few that has tracked adolescents’ literate experiences and growth across the secondary school years and across the content areas. It is built on what students told us about their challenges and successes in those situations.
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