Emergent Literacy | The Belonging Project

Emergent Literacy Course

This course invites educators, students, and school communities into a deeper understanding of belonging through the lens of Emergent Literacy. Through story, case examples, and practical routines, the course connects inclusive literacy instruction with the deeper work of belonging: being seen as capable, having something to say, and being invited into shared meaning. Designed for real systems as opposed to idealized classrooms, this course equips adults to design environments where communication, reading, and writing are available to everyone.

Video 1 : Introduction to Emergent Literacy course.

Video 2: Overview of how courses work.

Emergent literacy invites a different imagination. Emergent literacy and belonging ask us to see reading, writing, speaking and listening as ways of being human together; ways of sharing meaning, identity, and our stories. It reminds us that literacy develops through opportunity, experience, interaction and connection. Grounded in belonging, narrative pedagogy, and implementation science, this course supports school teams, including clinicians and administrators, in designing literacy environments where every learner, regardless of age, diagnosis, or communication mode, can participate meaningfully in reading, writing, listening, and speaking alongside their peers.

Each course is built around a collection of narrative learning stories that bring inclusive education to life through realistic, practice based accounts. These stories are designed to help you reflect, make connections, and see how course ideas take shape in real school contexts. As you read, you’ll notice how belonging, access, and participation are experienced differently across roles and settings.

You’re invited to choose one story to follow throughout the course. Select the story that most closely connects to your role, context, or curiosity. This story will serve as a steady lens as you move through the learning interludes and activities. If you’d like, you can return to this library at any time to explore additional stories and see how similar themes unfold in different situations.

Once you’ve chosen your story, you’re ready to continue and can do so by moving to the Course Content tab at the top of the page. Independent learners can move directly into the course content and begin with Learning Interlude 1. If you’re learning with a facilitator, they’ll guide you through the journey using the shared materials and prompts provided.

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Prefer to begin with story?

This complete narrative PDF is available for those who wish to read the story straight through, use it for personal reflection, or engage with it in a small group outside the course sequence. Questions to sit with are included at the end of each chapter.

Jonah Needs a Specialized Program: Who Belongs?

Jonah moves through junior high on the periphery. An EA, Ms. Rene, helps him transition between classrooms, manage materials, including his talker (AAC device), and make it to the bus. In most classes, he sits at the back with a “basic skills” binder that follows him from room to room. When Jonah has free time, his preferred activity is to search for vacuum videos on YouTube, watching and re-watching with the kind of focus teachers wish would show up during instruction. He doesn’t make trouble, doesn’t demand attention, and doesn’t interrupt lessons, so Jonah seems fine, even while he’s almost entirely outside the shared learning.

Jonah’s family keeps asking for more than presence. They want peer connection, growth toward independence, meaningful reading and writing, real communication and a place in the school community. They know they are asking a lot, but feel that if they don’t push, Jonah will get lost in the system. The teaching team keeps circling the same fear: we don’t know how to program for him in a regular classroom. Some teachers, like Mr Morrison, believe that a specialized program would be more appropriate, predictable, and functional, and would provide Jonah with better long-term outcomes. Others worry that specialized programming can become a life sentence of reduced curriculum, separate spaces, and the same binder with a different cover. Mr. Morrison feels stuck between what he believes and what he can picture doing in his ELA class.

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Ms. Chen is Drowning

Ms. Chen teaches Grade 3 at Riverstone Elementary. She has 28 students and six IPPs, and she’s running on caffeine, willpower and the fragile belief that she can keep everyone safe and learning at the same time. Two students, Micah and Ethan, pull most of her attention because the classroom often becomes unsafe or unworkable. Micah is minimally speaking and repeats phrases from YouTube and Disney with impressive accuracy; she can decode/recite text, but comprehension is unclear. She has an AAC device but mostly uses it for highly preferred pages, and writing typically turns into hand-over-hand support because it’s faster, looks like success, and everyone is just trying to survive. Ethan is non-speaking, frequently dysregulated, and a skilled escape artist. He loves pulling books off shelves, stacking them, and running his thumb along the page edges to hear the sound and interrupting him can be catastrophic.

There’s the EA, Ms. Renee, to help, but only in the mornings and shared across the class. Ms. Renee is skilled but stretched to her breaking point. Ms. Chen worries about the rest of the kids, but he quieter fear is worse: she can feel the class learning a rule she never taught on purpose; that belonging is for the students who are easiest to teach. She doesn’t want Micah and Ethan to be managed into compliance. She wants them included as learners. She just can’t see how to do it without burning out. This story follows a teacher trying to move from behaviour management to engagement, without burning out.

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Barriers to Literacy

Prairie View School is seeing more students with complex learning profiles, but staffing and system supports haven’t kept pace due to budgetary constraints. Literacy is a district priority, and teachers have been trained in the Science of Reading and UFLI. Central office must report on progress in training, targets, and plans. In classrooms, though, many complex learners struggle to physically participate, communicate what they know, and stay regulated long enough to engage, and standardized assessments can’t capture their skills. As a result, teachers and EAs frequently start “at the beginning” every year, not because they’re careless, but because the system doesn’t offer reliable ways to assess, adapt, or build continuity for these learners.

The principal raises the alarm: this isn’t a motivation problem or a “try harder” problem; it’s a design problem. Parents are frustrated (“Why is my Grade 6 child still doing kindergarten work?”), staff are exhausted, and specialists are stretched thin, while central office is under budgetary pressure and continually facing board-level expectations. The principal is caught between empathy and accountability. The story follows Prairie View staff and district leaders as they confront the uncomfortable gap between rigorous literacy goals and the conditions required for students with complex needs to actually access, participate, and show learning because literacy for all isn’t a slogan, it’s a systems test and the staff at Prairie View is starting to realize that the system needs to change what it builds, what it protects, and what and who it counts.

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Wahaj Has Multiple Disabilities: How Do We Include Him... Really?

Wahaj is a 6th-grade student at Harvest Hill Elementary and will be transitioning to a junior High school next year. with multiple significant disabilities. He has a profound hearing loss (aided), suspected CVI, and complex motor needs—he uses a wheelchair and sometimes a walker. He’s g-tube fed and needs extensive physical support for daily care and transfers. A PODD book is in place for communication. He does not (yet) have a reliable "yes/no", but can activate switches to turn pages or control music, and use a voice-output “step-by-step” switch to greet people—recorded in a peer’s voice.

Wahaj loves being read to, and he lights up around classmates, but most of his day happens beside an EA. Much of his learning becomes listening nearby, writing becomes watching someone else do it. The PODD book is often present and travels with him like a symbol of intention rather than a tool of participation. The team cares deeply and is doing a lot, including (but not limited to) transfers, positioning, safety, and all personal care. But care has started to crowd out learning and membership. Peer relationships are warm but accidental, happening in the cracks instead of by design. His family speaks Amharic at home and does not use the PODD book intended for home use, citing that they know what he wants. But the family is firm: they want school to feel like a community, not a care plan. With transition to junior high on the horizon, the question sharpens: what does it mean for Wahaj to be included as a learner and communicator, not just safely present? The EA, SLP, and OT know that “in the room” isn’t the same as “in the learning,” and that belonging will require more than good intentions. It will require routines that make room for Wahaj’s voice, agency, and relationships. This story follows a team as they grapple with how to include Wahaj as a learner and communicator in shared literacy and learning routines.

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Credits, Dignity, and the Life Skills Bubble

At Summit Grove Secondary, a small group of Grade 10 students with significant disabilities is placed in a life skills program that runs like a parallel universe. While most Grade 10 students move through English, science, foods, construction, drama, adolescence in full colour, these students’ week runs like a parallel universe: worksheets, booklets, adult-led tasks, Friday coffee delivery, laundry for sports teams. There is an effort to have some students join in elective classes like art & drama, but timetable constraints and each teacher's comfort have to be considered. The life skills program focuses on functional skills through worksheets and booklets for those who can manage. Staff care deeply, but they’re anxious about safety, pacing, and whether grade-level curriculum is appropriate.

For some families, the life skills bubble feels like protection, a place where their child is safe and supported. For others, it feels like a slow leak of dignity: being surrounded by teenagers but never really part of teenage life. The school team is split, not because anyone is cruel, but because they’re answering different questions. One side asks, “How do we keep this student safe and successful?” The other asks, “Successful at what, and at what cost?” Timetable constraints get invoked like natural laws, and “functional skills" get used like a moral shield. The story begins when someone asks the question that makes everyone uncomfortable: if we believe these students belong here, why are they so separate? This story follows a school as it tries to break the bubble and build literacy routines that actually belong in a high school.

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The Device in the Backpack

The kindergarten team at Emmaus Catholic School is worried because Mateo is “not ready for literacy.” He is non-speaking and communicates mostly through gestures, vocalizations, and facial expressions. He has an AAC device that technically comes to school, but most days it stays in his backpack or on a counter because staff believe it is too complex for him, and he just plays with it anyway, which is disruptive. During literacy block, Mateo is often given separate matching tasks or sensory breaks while the class does shared reading, table work, and partner talk. Adults focus on getting him calm and compliant, then document that he “didn’t participate” and “doesn’t use AAC.” The pattern becomes self-fulfilling; he doesn’t get access to literacy routines because he isn’t participating, and he isn’t participating because he isn’t getting access.

A specialists are called in to increase AAC use and support regulation, but the first thing they notice is uncomfortable: Mateo isn’t failing readiness. The environment is failing to create opportunities. He rarely gets repeated chances to hear stories in predictable ways, make real choices about texts, join routines with clear roles, or see adults model language on his system without demanding a performance. The team has been waiting for prerequisites, such as activating his device on demand and sitting still, before giving Mateo experiences that actually build communication and literacy. Now a decision has to be made. Will the school keep treating AAC and literacy as optional until Mateo proves he deserves them? Or will they redesign literacy so Mateo can start as a communicator and reader right now—messy, human, and included?