Reading First in Virginia, the professional development office of the state Reading First grant, is housed at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. RFIV has served over 6000 teachers during our funding. This includes ALL teachers and administrators in Reading First funded elementary schools plus others who elected to attend an academy. We have run five summers of Teacher Reading Academies positioned across the state. In 2006-2007, we also taught academies on Saturdays during the academic year and we designed K-3 academies for on-line instruction. A new academy for teachers of grades 4-12 Special Education students was piloted in summer 2007 with repeat offerings scheduled in winter 2008 and summer 2008. And now, we are piloting our first academy specifically tailored for K-3 ELL teachers.

Half-way through the grant, we designed "tier-two" workshops, designed for teachers who have attended academies and who seek deeper understanding about topics presented (Phonemic Awareness and Phonics, for example). We now offer those workshops across the state. We also sponsor state-wide lectures and conferences, open to all, on topics identified to be of interest to teachers in our state. All events are paid for by the Reading First funding and are offered free to participating teachers.

During the first 3 years of this grant, research associates in our office updated and reformatted the materials from Texas that are used in our academy training. We produced new videotapes featuring teachers and children in our state that augment the print material. Our newest academies are based on curriculum from the University of Virginia.

We have been able to build this state outreach in professional development because of the "backbone infrastructure" of our website. We register, enroll, and track teacher attendance at academies, workshops, and conferences via this website. The professional development page on our website is a "value added" site for teachers who hold accounts in the website. On that page, they can find supplemental information to support their teaching.

It has been the mission of the RFIV office to present the most honest and current information on teaching reading to state teachers so that they can become stronger teachers of reading. The final outcome of our grant will be improvements in reading scores of children in Virginia. Teacher knowledge is the key to those improved scores.