• it blends two focus areas and equips teachers with strategies to address them simultaneously: social and emotional learning and disciplinary literacy
• it makes use of authentic texts, which students engage with collaboratively to explore meaningful, real-life approaches to key disciplinary concepts
• it has been tested by 100 teachers in four European countries, and proven effective in developing students’ social emotional and disciplinary literacy competences within a variety of disciplines: mathematics, biology, history, geography, foreign languages, etc.

It will provide you with models for discussing various issues related to authentic texts that your students will read, as well as new teaching strategies to enrich your practice and strengthen your students’ learning achievements. Students’ literacy and social emotional abilities require meaningful discussion as well as vivid, engaging, and dynamic interaction.

• Through social engagement and explicit teaching approaches, GROWE will develop a student’s social, emotional and literacy competences.
• Students’ social emotional learning (SEL) and disciplinary literacy learning (DL) have a direct impact, not only on their school careers, but also their success and wellbeing as adults. It is therefore important to adopt strategies which increase or develop them.
• The GROWE model is an original approach which blends students’ social emotional learning (SEL) and disciplinary literacy learning (DL).
• By developing these skills, the GROWE model aims to enhance their learning abilities through the unique blend of DL and SEL.

“Every student has to be aware of their own potential and limitations, in reference to themselves and to others”, Romanian Teacher

“When working in teams we developed ideas I would have never had without them”, Romanian student

“Social and emotional skills are like tools without which learning is impossible”, Lithuanian Teacher

Social and emotional learning is the “process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions” (CASEL, 2020). The areas of competence connected to this process – self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making – are crucial in students’ development and growth.

Disciplinary literacy focuses on the specifics of reading, writing, and communicating within a discipline. The term denotes the ways of thinking, the skills, and the tools used by experts in the disciplines. Each discipline has a specialized vocabulary and components unique to that discipline and secondary students need to be therefore taught the “nuanced differences in producing knowledge via written language across multiple disciplines” (Moje, 2007, p. 9). This can be best achieved by using various types of authentic texts (i.e. not school textbooks).

One of the main features of our model is the use of authentic texts, which can be defined as any text written with no direct didactic purpose (i.e.: not textbooks).

“Authentic text is real, living language written to engage readers and draw them in; it may entertain, inform, or persuade. It invites active reading, robust problem-solving, and deep analysis because it comprises conceptually rich, compelling ideas and language from life.” (Bridges, L. (2018)

“Authentic texts have a great impact on students. They feel they are being treated like adults, like real experts: they are being trusted to go beyond what the textbook provides.” (Romanian teacher) 

“They are a brilliant way to introduce complex terminology and can give different perspectives on topics.” (UK teacher) 

“They enable students to build the habit of relating effectively to real-life situations. They help students to expand their knowledge beyond school-based activities and they show them why the learned information is relevant.” (Romanian teacher)