8:04 a.m., Aug. 6, 2010----The University of Delaware is working with schools throughout Delaware to improve the teaching of American history in a project supported by a $1 million Teaching American History grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

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The grant was awarded to five school districts and the University's Delaware Center for Teacher Education (DCTE) and over the last two weeks 44 teachers from 13 public, independent, and charter schools collaborated with professionals and faculty from the DCTE, the Department of History and the School of Education to better instruction in the field.

Other partners in the project include the Hagley and Winterthur museums, the Delaware Historical Society, and Delaware Public Archives.

The three-year Historical Literacy Project unites teachers in grades 4-12 with historians from the University's Department of History to deepen teachers' history content knowledge. Professionals and faculty from DCTE and the School of Education then work with the teachers to explore ways to make that content accessible to their students.

The year-around professional development occurs in weekend workshops, summer institutes, professional learning communities, and evening lectures featuring historians and authors from around the country.

“The underlying logic of the project,” says project director Fran O'Malley of the Delaware Center for Teacher Education, “is that levels of student achievement in American history are linked to students' abilities to comprehend challenging historical texts and their teachers' abilities to help make that text accessible. Consequently, we blend history content with literacy strategies and instructional methods in the project's professional development plan.”

The program recognizes the tendency of many history teachers to use children's and young adult literature as vehicles for teaching the stories of our past. The Historical Literacy Project engages its participants with renowned nonfiction authors such as Russell Freeman, Tonya Bolden, Anne Bausum, Candace Fleming and Jim Murphy, who co-present with UD historians to explain how history is constructed and presented to varied audiences.

The Historical Literacy Project also offers teachers field trips to historically significant sites such as Independence Hall, New York City's tenement district and Gettysburg, and to local and national archives where the participants receive primary sources and learn how to work with their students to “do history.”

The Historical Literacy Project underscores the University's Path to Prominence with its commitments to the principles of partnership and engagement. “Teaching American History grants create yet another opportunity for the history department to collaborate with our colleagues in the Delaware Center for Teacher Education, the School of Education, and K-12 teachers,” says Anne Boylan, professor of history and summer institute director. “Partnerships like this are significant means for enhancing history instruction in Delaware schools.”

An external evaluator from the Center for Effective School Practices is conducting an ongoing, comparative assessment of the project's impact on student achievement, classroom instruction, quality and quantity of resources offered to participants, and changes in the quality of participants' units of instruction. Pre-post data gathered on student achievement from four separate cohorts in year 1 of the project revealed gains ranging 3.8 percent to 26.1 percent with an average of 13.57 percent, this coming at a point where professional development addressed only 22 percent of the topics to be addressed over the life of the grant.

“As I enter the third year of the Historical Literacy Project, I find myself getting more excited about the workshops to come,” says Ashlyn Duncan of Everett Meredith Middle School in the Appoquinimink School District. “Every hour spent in this program is paid back tenfold... In addition to content, resources, and fresh ideas for teaching and engaging students, I appreciate the 'real time' support that a partnership with UD offers.”