Photo: Kate Samp for Strategies for Children
By their third birthday, children in poor families on welfare have vocabularies, on average, of about 500 words, which is roughly half the typical vocabulary of children whose parents hold professional jobs. Moreover, children in the professional families hear, on average, about 2,150 words an hour, compared with 600, on average, for the child in a poor family – and 1,250, on average, for a child in a working class family.
These striking statistics, first published in 1995, in the landmark Hart and Risley study, continue to inform our thinking about young children and the importance of oral language, interactive play and vocabulary as the building blocks of later literacy. The research from New York City’s Bellevue Hospital that I’ll write about tomorrow is just one example of the way Hart and Risley’s findings continue to resonate.
Who were Hart and Risley? And what did they do that was so groundbreaking? (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.
