Literacy Education, M.Ed.

We ongoingly assess and revise our literacy education graduate courses to make the most meaningful to prepare students to reach their aspirations. We are proud of our writing and coaching courses that will prepare our students to teach writing or remediate writing difficulties, as well coach other teachers while leading school-wide literacy programs. Woven through our courses, students will be prepared to teach students from diverse backgrounds. They will apply literacy teaching and learning theories from birth through adulthood during 100 practicum hours built into the program.

The Literacy Education curriculum takes place over three terms. At Roberts Wesleyan University, we encourage our students to learn at a healthy pace, ensuring that they maintain a positive work-life balance during their studies, and we provide full-time and part-time study options with program starts in all three terms.

Your First Term Courses

Your first term will feature three courses that will help you learn about literacy foundations, literacy assessment, and writing. The first course presents an overview of the major language and literacy acquisition theories through an introduction to the theorists who have shaped current literacy instruction. You will review current literature in the field, and make connections between theory and practice. The second course will focus on assessing literacy. You will study, critique, and apply assessment tools for evaluating phonological awareness (including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, writing, and motivation, for example. In this course, you will develop an assessment toolkit, and you will use it when you conduct a case study.

In your third course, you will practice and build confidence in your writing and teaching of writing by composing across genres and modes to discover your own writing process, examine current research and theory on the teaching of writing to inform instructional decisions, and learn research-based practices in teaching writing for the real-world classroom. You will participate in a 25-hour online writing workshop with children in grades 5-12 to authentically apply your learning.

Your Second Term Courses

The first course in your second term extends your understanding of literacy assessment and prepares you to develop assessment-driven literacy instruction suitable for students that experience reading and writing difficulties in grades K-2. You will garner the skills to plan lessons that connect explicit, research-based, code-emphasis instruction with reading and writing for authentic purposes with students with a variety of interests and backgrounds.

The second course in your second term will prepare you to support students’ literacy skills with an emphasis on reading comprehension. You will explore a variety of research-based instructional approaches. As an example, you will plan read-aloud, close reading, and shared reading lessons.

The third course in your second term will focus on supporting students with language-based learning disabilities. Building on the fundamentals of language and reading development, you will increase your knowledge of the intricate processes of reading and writing in order to identify learner characteristics and needs of students with varying language-based learning disabilities and other cognitive developmental disorders. Most importantly, you will apply knowledge of appropriate decision-making to create targeted interventions and supports to ensure students are effectively learning to read and reading to learn.

Your Third Term Courses

The third term consists of three 10-week classes and a final 2-week culminating practicum. The practicum is exciting because it allows you to showcase all you learned throughout the program.

In your first course, you will explore a wide range of books, magazines, media, applications, websites, and other print intended for children and adolescents. Topics will include critiquing books, evaluating non-fiction, working with novels, literature circles, web-based instruction, presenting and viewing skills, and matching appropriate reading materials with the child. You will read widely in this class.

Your second course will prepare you to be a literacy leader in their school building. You will learn how to engage in instructional coaching, including working through a coaching cycle with colleagues; modeling research-based instructional strategies; engaging in data-driven dialogue to collaboratively analyze student data and create instructional/intervention plans; and planning a variety of professional development opportunities for colleagues.

In your third course, you will develop a repertoire of discipline-specific teaching strategies that can be applied to reading, writing, listening, and speaking across disciplines. Topics will include evaluating a text for complexity, preparing students to read rigorous texts, understanding the importance of academic language and supporting vocabulary development, creating strategic and purposeful lessons through modeling and thinking aloud, the implementation of inquiry and project-based learning in across disciplines and assessing student learning in an equitable and culturally responsive manner.

Your fourth course is a 50-hour practical culmination of all the courses in your program. You will teach students in grades 4-7 both individually and in small groups. You will design lessons or intervention plans, write field logs, and reflect on your teaching and learning.