This proposal outlines a capstone project to address the literacy achievement gap between African American males and their peers in middle school. The author plans to create an intervention class using two adolescent novels that incorporate relevant texts and literacy strategies to help African American male students connect reading to their own lives. The project involves researching factors contributing to the achievement gap and developing a standards-based curriculum around the selected novels to target these issues. The goal is to improve literacy instruction and close the gap by making reading more applicable and meaningful for these students.

1. Capstone Project
Proposal
Danielle Gugel

2. Topic Summary
 A significant issue facing Middle School literacy
teachers is the achievement gap between African
American males and their peers. This issue comes
from many social, economic and historical
inadequacies; when trying to target literacy instruction
that is applicable and relevant towards these young
males, many teachers aren’t equipped with the proper
research or instructional strategies. As Alfred Tatum
states, “literacy reform efforts aimed at improving
African American male adolescents’ reading
achievement and life outcomes have been woefully
inadequate and have underestimated the depth of
literacy needs (Tatum, 2008).” Therefore this area of
research needs to continue to give teachers the
stepping stones to helping to close the gap and
empower the young male population that is slowly
being left behind.

3. Relevance to Literacy
Instruction
 In this project, I seek to understand the underlying
causes for the discrepancy in African American male
literacy growth. I will also address some of the causes
with an Intervention model that directly helps such
students identify with literary contexts and use literacy
strategies in ways that they can connect to their own
lives.
 This is relevant even to my own classroom where I
notice this achievement gap and lack of interest in
reading that impairs my African American males’
reading growth. Denver Public Schools has a 13%
African American population, and if realistic strategies
aren’t used to target specific sub-groups, the gap will
continue to grow.

4. Project Idea
 After extensive research on the education theory of how to
improve instruction for African American male teens, I would
like to create an Intervention Class targeted at applying
realistic and contextually-relevant texts for African American
adolescent males. I would like to integrate the Common
Core standards to help target specific reading strategies.
The bigger goal is to help such students to understand how
reading and literacy can connect them to the reality of their
own lives and how it can help them achieve.
 I will use two adolescent novels to base the curriculum and
strategies on: We Beat the Street by Sampson Davis and
The Battle of Jericho by Sharon Draper.

5. Plan for Completion
 Weeks 2-4- Research on factors for African American
male literacy issues
 Weeks 4-6 Create standards-based curriculum and
literature circle guides based on two novels and
applicable factors for targeting issues found in research
 Week 7 Revision and finalizing of Intervention
curriculum

6. How project will improve
Instruction/ Literacy
 I truly believe that if we find applicable texts and
curriculum that students can apply to their own lives,
they will find it easier to apply literacy strategies and
skills that will improve their overall educational
performance. I also think that such targeted
interventions could be created for many other groups
that are slowly falling behind in the achievement gap
such as Hispanic males and others. Many of the
students in my Intervention class just want to feel as
though school is relevant to their own experiences and
lives.