The Story Project: School-Based Literacy
The Make Way for Books Story Project provides research-based early literacy support to educators, parents, and children at preschools, child care centers, and home providers.
On-Site Coaching and Professional Development Workshops
Early Literacy Coaches provide one-on-one coaching and professional development workshops for nearly 700 educators each year. Our Early Literacy Coaches visit under-resourced preschools and childcare centers to providing ongoing coaching for educators on an ongoing basis throughout the school year. Coaches support educators in providing literacy and language-rich interactions, implementing quality shared reading experiences for young children, creating writing centers, integrating literacy into daily activities, supporting social-emotional development through literacy, and other methods of increasing the culture of literacy in their classrooms. In addition, Make Way for Books Early Literacy Coaches offer a variety of interactive professional development workshops for hundreds of early childhood educators each year. As a result of The Story Project, 99% of educators gain strategies, skills, and tools to better support the emergent literacy and language development of young children in their care.
According to a participating educator,
“What haven't I learned? The many connections with literacy, vocabulary, communication, imagination. Literacy is connected with everything. Children have learned to self express with stories. Learned to make strong connections with children if there's a story involved. They open up to us."
Libraries and Classroom Books
Make Way for Books provides preschools, child care centers, and home-care providers with high-quality, multicultural, cloth, board, and hardcover books for libraries and classroom collections. Each year, more than 32,000 books are checked out by families and shared together at home. 100% of sites reported an increase in their children’s pre-reading skills after participating in the program.
"Several of the parents had mentioned on their first home visit that they had never read to their four- year-old. Because of Make Way for Books’ services, by the end of year all of my students were being read to daily."