Daily Pioneer News

The project will be under the direction of Gwen Coe, early childhood education professor at UW-Platteville.

PLATTEVILLE-The University of Wisconsin-Platteville was awarded a grant in the amount of $49,335 from the University of Wisconsin System for the purpose of improving early literacy.

The project will span three years allowing two groups of teachers to complete training and return to their schools and serve as mentors for one full year. Participants will attend workshops on best practices in early literacy and mentoring and will return to their districts to provide in-service and mentoring to other teachers in their district

"Because of declining enrollments, limited resources and declining budgets, it's often hard for school districts and teacher to afford professional development activities. The grant was a way to provide professional development to surrounding school districts," said Gwendolyn Coe, professor of early childhood education at UWP.

According to the grant proposal, the objectives for the project are divided into two categories, objectives for students and objectives for teachers. The student objectives are listed as follows: students will demonstrate age appropriate literacy skills at the end of each school year as measured on the Early Literacy Advisor and will improve test scores on the Wisconsin State Reading test that is taken in third grade.

The Early Literacy Advisor is a computerized diagnostic assessment system that helps teachers analyze a child's current level of literacy and helps determine the best future teaching strategies.

The main objectives of the project for teachers are to learn strategies for increasing the early literacy of students, share their knowledge with other teachers in their district and serve as mentors.

As part of the training provided over three years, an oral language course will be delivered by Elena Bodrova and Coe. Bodrova is a senior consultant at Mid continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) in Aurora, Colo. and a Research Fellow at the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER). She is the author of multiple articles and book chapters on the subjects of early literacy, play and assessment, including Tools of the Mind: The Vygotskian Approach of Early Childhood Education.

"Bodrova is a national and international expert in the field. She is well respected and a colleague. I wanted to bring her to Platteville so other people can work with her. She is more of a practitioner than a researcher and will visit the attendees on-site and show them practical examples," said Coe.

A total of $1,189,544 was awarded to 25 funded projects throughout Wisconsin. UW-Platteville will receive approximetly 140,000 for this project over a span of three years.