Project LIFT

Project LIFT: Literacy/STEM Improvement For Today's Students

The goal of Project LIFT is to help teachers improve interdisciplinary teaching and learning by infusing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) into the Readable English literacy program.

Since 2021, faculty from Indiana University’s (IU) School of Education collaborated with the Readable English literacy program team to provide professional development workshops and follow-up classroom support for schoolteachers throughout Indiana.

Project LIFT Data Summary

Project news

A new project with support from the IU School of Education will bring vital STEM education to rural students around southern Indiana. Project LIFT (Literacy/STEM Improvement for Today’s Students) is designed to advance literacy while enhancing STEM education for K-8 students in the region. The project will combine two research-based educational programs, Readable English and Novel Engineering, to improve student literacy and STEM content knowledge and practices.

For the last two years, the project has brought together teams of educators from the same school districts who teach grades 2 through 8 - and are participating in the Readable English literacy program - to explore STEM and literacy connections and introduce them to Novel Engineering. Novel Engineering is a research-based approach to STEM education that aims to improve student understanding of engineering (e.g., who engineers are and what engineers do). Novel Engineering leverages literature to provide rich contexts for learning which creates bi-directional benefits - simultaneously improving literacy and STEM education. In Novel Engineering, students identify problems faced by characters in popular novels or non-fiction books and then design, build, and improve solutions for them. Novel Engineering was developed by the Center for Engineering Education Outreach (CEEO) at Tufts University.

Project LIFT is an Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) Learning Recovery grant program.