The Advancing Adolescent Reading Initiative, a comprehensive professional development program has been developed in partnership with the University of Alberta and Alberta Education for Alberta educators teaching in grades 7-12.

AARI draws upon local, national and international adolescent literacy specialists to provide instructional leadership to the program. AARI professional development is spread across two years of study and includes:

• Eight Online Learning Modules
  AARI is a series of sequenced, online, interactive learning modules aimed at developing the deep foundational knowledge necessary to understand how students learn to read—and why some of them struggle. The first four focus on language, reading, data-informed assessment and instruction. The second four modules focus on content area reading skills, differentiated reading instruction across content areas and instructional coaching.
• Weekends With the Experts
  Internationally recognized experts will be brought in to share their insights and expertise with the cohort and invited guests. These weekends will allow access to the latest in research and practice. The WWE presentations will be held at the U of A but will also be available online.
• Summer Institutes
  These 3 to 5 day institutes at the University of Alberta will include modeling, teacher practice, and group work. The first will take place late August 2011 and the second is scheduled for July of 2012.

AARI Overview (PDF)