Dr. Peggy Semingson

For Faculty

Assistant Professor of Literacy Studies
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
College of Education and Health Professions

UT Arlington Faculty

Dr. Semingson received a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Language and Literacy Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.Ed. from Texas State University in Reading Education, and a Bachelors of Arts in Philosophy from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Prior to her academic career, Dr. Semingson taught elementary school as a bilingual teacher and reading specialist for eight years. Dr. Semingson began teaching at UT Arlington in the Fall of 2008.

Service Learning Class

LIST 4373 LITERACY LEARNING FOR EC-6 STUDENTS: READING AND WRITING 3 hours credit. Balanced literacy approach to teaching with an emphasis on reading and writing. Theoretical models, principles of teaching reading and writing using a variety of instructional strategies, the role of phonemic awareness, effective program organization, assessment, and classroom management.

This course is a required undergraduate course that focuses on preparation of pre-service teachers to teach reading and writing in their future classrooms.

Academic Outcomes

Design a coherent reading unit that centers on sharing information about sustainability-related topics through a text set of quality, high-interest read aloud of children’s books.
Incorporate feedback and response from students and families to design learner-centered activities that enhance academic learning as well as encourage and empower students and families to take action in their communities on sustainability-related topics.
Reflect on the overall learning experience in terms of strengths, goals met, and challenges faced.
Apply learning about reading and writing instructional methods to the literacy teaching and learning of elementary-aged students.

Service Learning Project

Read aloud Service Project

As a community service initiative teacher candidates seeking EC-6 (elementary) teaching certification will create read aloud lesson plans that incorporate use of children’s literature with sustainability topics (community, environment, commerce, and energy). These plans will include open-ended discussion questions related to key ideas that would facilitate dialogue and discussion about the topics as well as solutions that enable us to conserve, build community, and live productively. Students will share these lesson plans with teachers and students in the community of Arlington in addition to reading aloud sustainability-related books to children in the community. Students create a coherent unit to read a set of related books to a group of students. UTA students read the sustainability book(s) to a student or group of students and reflect on how it went and what impact they made. UTA students also create a booklist of suggested readings and a list of reading tips for families and students. Finally, based on the key themes of the unit, UTA students design an action-plan activity with children so that children can, in turn, become teachers to others in the community, hence sustaining the project itself.

A website has been created to disseminate the lesson plans and information on teaching sustainability topics in EC-6 classroom settings. The link is: http://www3.uta.edu/faculty/peggys/Sustainability%20Bibliography%20Main%20Page.htm

Dr. Semingson will seek future grant funding to scale-up the project and share information about sustainability topics and integration with literacy curriculum in a wider capacity.

Product/Result: (Grant/Brochure/Celebration/Student Reflection/etc.)