"We see ourselves as an important community
resource. We welcome the opportunity to share our facilities, talents,
and expertise with others; to form partnerships with groups and organizations——whether
they are next door or around the world——whose mission, goals, and objectives
are in harmony with our own; and to provide cultural, religious, artistic,
athletic, and social programming that enhances the quality of life of our
city and our province."
-St. Thomas Univsersity mission
statement
On July 10 2000, Heather Richmond PhD and Cheryl Miles MED attended the "Portraits of Literacy" conference at UBC to present the Male Mentors Pilot Project to practitioners, researchers, graduate students, and members of the larger community. A brief synopsis of their presentation can be found here.Project Proposal:The Boys' and Girls' Literacy: Closing the Gap project aims to address the literacy performance of boys, yet not at the expense of girls. The goal of this project is to provide additional strategies to assist boys in the English Language Arts program. The interventions are an attempt to alleviate the discrepancy between male and female literacy performance. The project is both reactive and proactive. This research project is a partnership between a local school district and a university. The principals are both literacy educators and researchers who came together to explore the school literacies of children in grade four and five over a two year period. Presently we are at the pilot stage of research and are working with male mentors who are doing reading circles in the pilot school.This past year, the Boys' and Girls' Literacy Project has focused on organization, and the responses of the male mentors. Over the course of the next school year, responses from children involved in the project, including written reactions and drawings, will come up on this site to clearly show the project in action. Much research into response theory has been done this year, and some of that background information can be found in this Annotated Bibliography on Boys and Reading, by Sheldon Miner BA3 (research assistant at St. Thomas University). Questions Methods Value of the Research Project
Links to sites about mentored learning / Child Literacy
General Literacy / Adult Literacy
Project Facilitators
Heather
Richmond PhD
Dr. Richmond's Webpage can be accessed
here
Cheryl Miles M.E.d
The Boys' and Girls' Literacy Project can be contacted via email at literacy@stthomasu.ca
Editing and Site Design by Ryan Murray:
markovchaney@canada.com
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