Click on the link below to access the recording of the Strategic Advisory Board Meeting Conference Call from November 2012.
Posted 11/30/12.
Connecting the Dots - Early Learning Systems and Public Libraries
Funding source: Washington State Library
Library/Childcare Cooperative Research
Emergent Readers Literacy Training & Assessment
October 1, 2009 - December 31, 2010
Pierce County Library Foundation
Funding source: Boeing Charitable Trust
Campana, Kathleen and Dresang, Eliza T. "Bridging the Early Literacy Gulf." Published in Proceedings of the 74th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science, January 2012. Available online at http://www.asis.org/asist2011/proceedings/submissions/134_FINAL_SUBMISSION.pdf.
Purpose: Pierce County Library System and its partners has received funding from the Boeing Corporation to replicate a successful school readiness program launched in 2005 by the Carroll County (Maryland) Public Library. The purpose is to produce a results-oriented, parent-child learning environment that raises awareness and brings early literacy knowledge and skills to an isolated segment of the community, in-home child care providers.
The Emergent Readers Literacy Traning and Assessment project works with in-home daycare providers in reaching children and parents in their care. When established, program activities for preschool children will be carried out in in-home daycares by childcare providers with skills taught and transferred to parents. Regular support and follow-up is embedded in the project with both providers and parents. In the scope of this program, independent data analysis is used to measure the degree of success in meeting the objectives of the Washington State Early Learning and Development Benchmarks and the principals of Every Child Ready to Read. Using the results of the data analysis and Incorporating education, childcare and community partnerships, this program can be reliably duplicated in other public library systems throughout Washington.
The final results were that children in the treament group had a larger positive gain in their scores between the pre and post assessment in the areas of phonological awareness, alphabetic principle and concepts about print. In-home family childcare providers, because of the project, were better prepared to teach reading readiness skills to the children in their care and their parents so that children could enter school ready to learn as demonstrated by improved language and literacy scores on the Washington State Early Learning assessment. For additional information on the results please see the full report above.
Status of grant project
Our staff and Early Learning team are hard at work on the second round of assessments. We look forward to year two of the project and the research results that follow.