The School of Education at the University at Albany has been a positive force for change in the Capital Region and throughout New York State for thousands of teachers and administrators. Through its degree programs any by its faculty members’ expert contributions to regional and national workshops, seminars and consulting, the School of Education has been a defining factor for excellence in teaching, learning, and leadership. In response to many requests and in light of the state’s newly implemented professional development requirements, the School of Education is very happy to announce the debut of their annual summer literacy institute. This year’s theme Elementary and Secondary Instruction was chosen specifically to address the demands put on schools by a growing emphasis on standards based testing and to guide teachers and administrators through positive solutions to enhance instruction that also lead to high test scores.
This year’s institut e w ill offer teachers and school leaders three days of intensive exploration of literacy instruction issues and techniques including an examination of the current issues facing literacy instruction. The institut e w ill feature University at Albany faculty and Capital Region experts in daily keynote addresses, follow-up break out sessions and focused workshops.
WHY LITERACY INSTRUCTION?
No matter what the subject, students need to learn from texts, whether those texts are printed, symbolic, visual, or aural. All require using language to learn from and make meaning of the material. In addition, high stakes assessments in every subject now include more reading and writing, so students need to become literate in each of their subject areas – to understand the literacy of that subject. Content area teachers in subjects other than English language arts have thus been thrust into a new role and can benefit from gaining a deeper understanding of literacy in general as well as in their own subject areas and from learning instructional strategies that help students learn content through reading, writing, and discussion.
