We often say that parents are children’s first teachers and that the path to reading success begins at birth. We know that skills beget skills – not to mention confidence. A recent report – “PIRLS 2011 Canada in Context: Progress in International Reading Literacy Study” — quantifies the impact of children’s early experiences on their developing literacy. Kelly Kulsrud, our director of reading proficiency, writes about the study in a recent post on Aspire Wire, the blog of Wheelock College’s Aspire Institute.
In findings that reinforce earlier research, the study emphasizes children’s home environments and the link between reading achievement and children’s attitudes about reading, Kulsrud writes. The study shows:
Children who enter school having been read to at home scored, on average, 35 points higher on the PIRLS test than children whose parents did not read to them. In addition, children of parents who like to read scored an average 36 points higher.
As I was walking down Commonwealth Avenue in Boston one recent morning, I passed a couple walking with their preschool-aged daughter. The sidewalk was still dotted with icy patches. “It’s slippery because there’s no friction,” the father told his daughter. Then they stepped onto dry concrete. “See,” he said, “the sidewalk is more secure. That’s because it has friction.”
Like the eggplant anecdote I described in an earlier blog post, here was an example of how everyday life provides opportunities to help young children understand the world around them and learn new words. To be sure, it will take more exposures before the little girl understands friction, but her father is engaging her in the kind of interaction that puts her on the path to success as a young reader and student.
Indeed, in her book, “Talk to Me, Baby,” Betty Bardige notes that the amount of playful talk young children experience in their first three years is a better predictor of success in school than socio-economic status or race. (Read a brief.)
“Thank you for parents who read to us every night — Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Louisa May Alcott — and who limited TV, which we three kids were completely bitter about back then but which turned us into voracious, lifelong readers. The rustle of pages was our family’s most sacred sound, our hymns, about wolves, and pioneer children, the little Japanese peach boy, the talking animals of Aesop, and then, oh, my God, Dr. Seuss.”
While families are critical to fostering children’s development as readers, too often family engagement plans fail to focus on literacy. Two related Lead for Literacy memos from the Language Diversity and Literacy Development Research Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education build on the family engagement event that we held recently at the Cambridge Public library. (Read the Cambridge Chronicle’s coverage of the event.)
The memos — “Designing Family Partnerships that Make a Difference” and “Implementing Family Partnerships that Make a Difference” — identify a number of common pitfalls. Families want to support their children’s learning but don’t know how. School-family partnerships rarely focus on building relationships. Plans are designed without input from families. Interactions with families arise mainly when problems arise, and communication is often one-way, from the school to the family.
To address these problems, the research group advises starting with a simple premise: “All families want to support their children’s learning; it is the responsibility of site leaders and staff to leverage this common goal and build partnerships.”
“A lot of schools tell me family engagement is something they do if they have time. They do not understand that it is an active ingredient of children’s success. It is important for school improvement…. We have to see families as part of the solution, instead of part of the problem. We’ve got to shift the paradigm if we want to make that connection with families.”
Karen Mapp, Harvard Graduate School of Education, November 2012
(From left), Karen Mapp, Theresa Lynn, Carolyn Lyons, Maryellen Coffey, Tanisha Harris, Joan Kelley, Francheska Reveron and Kelly Kulsrud. (Photo: Caroline Silber for Strategies for Children)
CAMBRIDGE — Tanisha Harris and Francheska Reveron, two mothers who live in the Robinson Gardens public housing complex in Springfield, were the final speakers at our event yesterday on family engagement and literacy. Their stories reinforced the messages delivered by the panel of other experts who preceded them.
Harris and Reveron are parent ambassadors for Talk/Read/Succeed! – a place-based initiative at two public housing developments in the Western Massachusetts city. They read daily with their children. They attend play groups and enroll their children in summer programs. They talk with their children and enjoy such activities as mapping the neighborhood together. Both women are active in the PTO; Reveron became its president.
Before participating in Talk/Read/Succeed! the women didn’t yet realize the importance of reading aloud to their children. They didn’t yet understand how or why to engage their children in the kind of conversation that builds the vocabulary and background knowledge that lay the foundation for reading with comprehension. They were not active in their children’s elementary school.
“My daughter feels empowered because I’m empowered,” Harris told the crowd. “She started getting more used to seeing me at home reading, and she wants to read. We go to the library every Wednesday and Saturday. Every Wednesday and Saturday. Before, we never did that. I checked her homework. Is it neat? That’s not enough. It’s not enough to know how to pronounce the words. She has to understand. I read ahead. What was last week’s chapter about? I know she understands what she reads.
“I had to be taught,” Harris said. “If it’s not something you grew up with, how are you supposed to know?”
“I’m here to learn with my daughter,” Reveron said. “I thank God for Talk/Read/Succeed.”
This is the kind of focused, supportive family engagement recommended in “Turning the Page: Refocusing Massachusetts for Reading Success,” which we commissioned in 2010. It was written by Nonie Lesaux, Ph.D., a nationally recognized literacy expert at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Yesterday’s event at the Cambridge Public Library was the first in a series of five we are holding to delve deeper into Lesaux’s recommendations (more…)
Associated Early Care and Education has operated a program at the Bromley-Heath public housing development for 60 years. It serves 80 children in a basement center. This is about to change.
Earlier this month, Associated announced it is ready to break ground on a $16 million children’s learning center that is expected to open in early 2014. The innovative new center will not only serve about 175 children up to age 8, but will also offer career-focused courses for adults and programs on parenting, nutrition and financial stability, The Boston Globe reports. The early education program will operate as a lab school, and its early educators will be required to have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher credential.
Funding for the center includes $5 million in federal grants, a $1.5 million state grant, and another $11 million in philanthropic donations and financing. (Check out the Boston Neighborhood News video above.)
“This is Associated’s crowning achievement and is the result of four years of planning and dreaming with many community partners to bring our vision to completion,” Wayne Ysaguirre, president and CEO of Associated, tells me. “The center’s goal is to engage the community – parents, civic partners, service providers, neighborhood leaders, public schools, health care institutions – to take a shared interest in helping young children achieve school readiness to succeed in school and in life.”
Approximately 200 people attended the groundbreaking ceremony, which highlighted early childhood development and family engagement, as well as the inter-agency cooperation needed to transform idea to reality. Ysaguirre, Secretary of Education Paul Reville, Boston Schools Superintendent Carol Johnson, Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz (co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Education), Representative Jeffrey Sanchez, and Bill McGonagle, administrator of the Boston Housing Authority, were among those who spoke at the event. Gregory Bialecki, Massachusetts secretary of housing and economic development, announced the state grant.
“We lead the nation in K-12 education, but we have large and persistent achievement gaps,” Reville said. “Schools alone cannot get the job done. We need to start early with high-quality early education for all children.”
Representative Sanchez called the center “a catalyst for change,” the Globe reports.
“Sanchez said that when he was 4, he enrolled in the Associated Early Care and Education center in the Mission Main housing development after his Spanish-speaking family moved from New York City,” the Globe reports. “’It’s where I learned English,’ he said. ‘I hope more children who are in the same situation that I was in can access programs like this.’”
This video from the Centers for Disease Control highlights one early education program’s effort to promote healthy eating and prevent childhood obesity. Look at it closely, and you notice that it also contains important examples of the kind of language-rich environment that promotes literacy development. In leading children in exercise, Claudia Mendoza, a teacher in the Los Angeles Universal Preschool program, asks them to “inhale” and “exhale.” She is helping children build vocabulary. Colorful printed cards—with text and pictures – illustrate the preschool yoga poses they are learning. The garden the children plant and their discussions of nutrition build the background knowledge that is critical for learning to read with comprehension. Likewise, Mendoza stresses family engagement. In focusing on the whole child, high-quality early learning programs prepare young children for productive and healthy futures.
November 2012 marks the 16th annual Family Literacy Month in Massachusetts.
“In celebration of Family Literacy Month, communities across the state will host activities throughout November in support of literacy, lifelong learning, and family well-being,” states a news release from the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE).
Secretary of Education Paul Reville, Deputy ESE Commissioner Alan Ingram, legislative leaders and local officials kicked off the month with a visit November 1 to the Intergenerational Literacy Program at the John Silber Early Learning Center in Chelsea. On November 2, EEC Commissioner Sherri Killins participated in a family literacy pajama party at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield.
’We know that children who can read by third grade have a better chance to succeed in their adult lives,” Governor Deval Patrick said in the news release. “‘Family engagement is a critical part of developing those literacy skills which is why we are committed to partnering with parents and families to provide the best chance for our children to succeed in the 21st century global economy.” (more…)
At our recent event at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Commissioner Sherri Killins of the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care talked about eggplants.
Eggplants? Yes. The vegetable is a central element in a story Commissioner Killins shared about young children and oral language development, a building block of reading. The tale comes from “It’s Not Complicated! What I Know for Sure About Helping Our Students of Color Become Successful Readers,” by Phyllis Hunter, former director of reading for Houston’s public schools.
Hunter describes three mothers grocery shopping one night with their young children. In the produce section, the first passes a display of glistening, freshly sprayed eggplants. “What’s that?” the child asks. The mother, clearly harried and tired and irritated, tells the child to be quiet. “I don’t know,” the mother says. “Don’t ask me any questions.”
Soon another mother and young child pass the eggplant display. “What’s that?” the child asks. (more…)
Eye on Early Education focuses on the twin goals of ensuring that Massachusetts children have access to high-quality early education and become proficient readers by the end of third grade.
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Alyssa Haywoode comes to Eye on Early Education after a career in journalism that included writing editorials for the Des Moines Register and Boston Globe. She has written about education, human services, immigration, homelessness, philanthropy and the arts.
At our recent event at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Commissioner Sherri Killins of the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care talked about eggplants.
Eye on Early Education focuses on the twin goals of ensuring that Massachusetts children have access to high-quality early education and become proficient readers by the end of third grade.
