TheComic Book Project is a United States comic-based afterschool program, in which elementary school children are given the opportunity to create comic books. The project was founded by Michael Bitz while part of the Teachers College at Columbia University, and is currently maintained by the Center for Educational Pathways.
As a senior research assistant at the Center for Arts Education Research at Columbia University's Teacher's College, Michael Blitz founded the Comic Book Project in 2001. His goal was to apply his research findings into a creative approach to get children to "combine skills such as reading, writing, brainstorming and conceptualizing ideas." Blitz launched the project in a single elementary school in Queens, New York, and later expanded it to afterschool programs in other parts of the city. Blitz partnered with the non-profit organization After-School Corp in order to expand his project in 2003. [1] The project had also received a push from adolescents comic book and manga clubs. By 2008, the Comic Book Project had spread to more than 850 urban and rural schools throughout the United States. [2] The Comic Book Project is currently maintained by the Center for Educational Pathways. [3]
In Comic Book Project workshops, groups of children are given the opportunity to collaborate on creating comic books with complex characters and storylines. [2]
Accelerated Reader (AR) is an educational program created by Renaissance Learning. It is designed to monitor and manage students' independent reading practice and comprehension in both English and Spanish. The program assesses students' performance through quizzes and tests based on the books they have read. As the students read and take quizzes, they are awarded points. AR monitors students' progress and establishes personalised reading goals according to their reading levels.
The South San Francisco Public Library is located in South San Francisco, California. It is an independent city library and part of the Peninsula Library System, a consortium of city, county, and community college libraries in San Mateo County. The library holds approximately 166,000 volumes and has 29,000 borrowers. In the fiscal year 2007–2008, the library circulated 687,000 items. The library provides access to homebound delivery services, numerous children's programs, a literacy program, a community learning center, 77 public computers, and free Wi-Fi.
Adolescent literacy refers to the ability of adolescents to read and write. Adolescence is a period of rapid psychological and neurological development, during which children develop morally, cognitively, and socially. All of these three types of development have influence—to varying degrees—on the development of literacy skills.
Kari-Lynn Winters, née Moore is a Canadian children's author, playwright, drama educator, and literacy professor. She taught children's literacy, literature, dance and drama education at the University of British Columbia from 2004 to 2009. In 2010, Winters became an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at Brock University (Ontario) and co-editor of Teaching and Learning. She advanced to associate professor in 2014, and to full professor in 2021.
After-school activities, also known as after-school programs or after-school care, started in the early 1900s mainly just as supervision of students after the final school bell. Today, after-school programs do much more. There is a focus on helping students with school work but can be beneficial to students in other ways. An after-school program, today, will not limit its focus on academics but with a holistic sense of helping the student population. An after-school activity is any organized program that youth or adult learner voluntary can participate in outside of the traditional school day. Some programs are run by a primary or secondary school, while others are run by externally funded non-profit or commercial organizations. After-school youth programs can occur inside a school building or elsewhere in the community, for instance at a community center, church, library, or park. After-school activities are a cornerstone of concerted cultivation, which is a style of parenting that emphasizes children gaining leadership experience and social skills through participating in organized activities. Such children are believed by proponents to be more successful in later life, while others consider too many activities to indicate overparenting. While some research has shown that structured after-school programs can lead to better test scores, improved homework completion, and higher grades, further research has questioned the effectiveness of after-school programs at improving youth outcomes such as externalizing behavior and school attendance. Additionally, certain activities or programs have made strides in closing the achievement gap, or the gap in academic performance between white students and students of color as measured by standardized tests. Though the existence of after-school activities is relatively universal, different countries implement after-school activities differently, causing after-school activities to vary on a global scale.
The most recent comprehensive data on adult literacy in the United States come from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) study conducted in stages from 2012 to 2017 by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). English literacy test results from 2014 suggest that 21% of U.S. adults ages 16 to 65 score at or below PIAAC literacy level 1, meaning they have difficulty "[completing] tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences." Included in that 21% is the 4.2% of respondents who were unable to be assessed due to language barriers, cognitive disability, or physical disability. A 2020 study by the Gallup analysis company funded by the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy estimated that getting all U.S. adults to at least PIAAC literacy level 3 proficiency would raise American's incomes by $2.2 trillion.
The use of comics in education is based on the concept of creating engagement and motivation for students.
Annette Patricia Lareau is a sociologist working at the University of Pennsylvania.
Donna Alvermann is an American educator and researcher in the field of Language and Literacy Education whose work focuses on adolescent literacy in and out of school, inclusive of new media and digital literacies. Her most recent research interest involves developing historical-autobiographical methods for uncovering silences in scholarly writing that mask more than they disclose. She is the Omer Clyde and Elizabeth Parr Aderhold Professor in Education in the Mary Frances Early College of Education at the University of Georgia (UGA). She is also a UGA-appointed Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education.
Anne Haas Dyson is a professor at the University of Illinois. Her fields are the study of literacy, pedagogy, and contemporary, diverse childhoods. Using qualitative and sociolinguistic research procedures, Dyson examines the use of written language from children's perspectives within their social worlds, and as they engage with popular culture. Books she has published include The Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write, Popular Literacies in Childhood and School Cultures (2003), Writing Superheroes, Contemporary Childhood, Popular Culture, and Classroom Literacy (1997), Social Worlds of Children Learning to Write in an Urban Primary School (1993), Multiple Worlds of Child Writers: Friends Learning to Write (1989). Dyson has also written articles for professional journals.
Susan Neuman is an educator, researcher, and education policy-maker in early childhood and literacy development. In 2013, she became Professor of Early Childhood and Literacy Education, and Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
Nell K. Duke is a contemporary educator and literacy researcher with an interest in informational text, early literacy development, and reading comprehension instruction, with an emphasis on children living in poverty. She is currently a professor of language, literacy, and culture and a faculty associate in the combined program in education and psychology at the University of Michigan.
The Create a Comic Project (CCP) is a youth literacy program and webcomic created by John Baird. The program uses comics, many taken from the Internet, to encourage children to write their own narratives. The program began in November 2006 at the main branch of the New Haven Free Public Library as an after-school program. The project has since worked with several other groups, including the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, Braddock Carnegie Library, and the Pittsburgh YMCA. Baird has presented the results of his work on the project at several conventions and conferences, including South by Southwest Interactive and SXSWedu. The project has been praised for its work in engaging children in learning by Marjorie Scardino, CEO of Pearson, Professor Mirta Ojito of Columbia University, and Arne Duncan, the US Secretary of Education.
Douglas K. Hartman is an American scholar in the field of education. He is a professor of technology & human learning in the College of Education at Michigan State University. He has a joint appointment in the Departments of Educational Psychology & Educational Technology and Teacher Education. His research focuses on the use of digital technologies for human learning in a number of domains.
Nichole Pinkard is an American computer scientist and the Alice Hamilton Professor of Learning Sciences and faculty director of the Office of Community Education Partnerships (OCEP) in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern. She is helping lead a collaboration with Apple and the Chicago Public School system to teach computer programming to teachers.
Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) was developed in 1993 by Dr. John T. Guthrie with a team of elementary teachers and graduate students. The project designed and implemented a framework of conceptually oriented reading instruction to improve students' amount and breadth of reading, intrinsic motivations for reading, and strategies of search and comprehension. The framework emphasized five phases of reading instruction in a content domain: observing and personalizing, searching and retrieving, comprehending and integrating, communicating to others, and interacting with peers to construct meaning. CORI instruction was contrasted to experience-based teaching and strategy instruction in terms of its support for motivational and cognitive development.
Pop Culture Classroom is a nonprofit organization based in Denver, Colorado that teaches literacy and the arts through alternative approaches to learn and increase character development. The organization creates educational programs for underserved youth, schools, and communities using comic books, graphic novels, and related media to inspire passion for reading, art, and learning.
Robert L. Selman is an American-born educational psychologist and perspective-taking theorist who specializes in adolescent social development. He is currently a professor of Education and Human Development at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a professor of psychology in Medicine at Harvard University. He is also known as the author of the 1980s G.I. Joe public service announcements.
Teachers College Reading and Writing Project was founded and directed by Lucy Calkins, The Robinson Professor of Children's Literature at Teachers College, Columbia University. Its mission was to help young people become avid and skilled readers, writers, and inquirers through research, curriculum development, and in-school professional development. TCRWP developed methods and tools for the teaching of reading and writing through research, curriculum development published through Heinemann, and professional development with teachers and school leaders. TCRWP supported the Reading Workshop and Writing Workshop approaches through its Units of Study curriculum. The project involved thousands of schools and teachers in New York and around the country in an ongoing, multi-faceted in-service community of practitioners engaged in the application and continual refinement of approaches to helping children become effective writers and readers.
Angela Marie Calabrese Barton is an American professor of teacher education. She is a Full professor at the University of Michigan and co-founder of Green Energy Technology (GET) City program.