PARTNERSHIPS FOR LITERACY

Early Reading First partnership between Puget Sound ESD, Tacoma Public Schools, MDC Early Childhood & ECEAP Center, & Sunrise Early Education Center

What is Early Reading First?
Early Reading First is part of the current federal No Child Left Behind legislation housed in the U.S. Department of Education. Part of the President's "Good Start, Grow Smart" initiative, Early Reading First is "designed to transform existing early education programs into centers of excellence that provide high-quality, early education to young children, especially those from low-income families… The overall purpose of the Early Reading First Program is to prepare young children to enter kindergarten with the necessary language, cognitive, and early reading skills to prevent reading difficulties and ensure school success." (as described on the federal DOE Early Reading First web site.)

Early Reading First is a new national competitive grant program that has had three rounds of funding. Over 1100 applications were received for the first two rounds of funding, and thirty projects were funded in January, and 30 more in October 2003. Only two projects have been funded in Washington State: the PSESD/Tacoma project and a project at the City of Seattle (funded in January). The project is funded for three years. As of September 2004, 32 additional projects were funded across the nation.

Why is Early Reading First important?
Current research has demonstrated that waiting until children demonstrate reading failure in the third grade is too late for intervention -- 74% of the children identified as having reading problems in Grade 3 continue to have problems in Grade 9. Brain research has shown actual brain differences between children at risk of reading failure and children not at risk. Based on the understanding that "literacy is a learned skill, not a biological awakening," Early Reading First promotes coherent, skill-based instruction in the years before kindergarten, to build the foundation needed for reading success.

Many children from less advantaged homes come to educational programs at age 5 already 4 years behind more advantaged children, and often remain behind throughout their school career. Much of this difference is based on differences in the ways that parents talk with their children. On average, children from more advantaged families will have heard more than 30 million words spoken to them by their parents by the time they are three years old, while children from less advantaged families will have heard approximately 10 million words -- only one third as much. By age 3, the average child from the advantaged family will have a vocabulary more than twice as large as the child from the less advantaged family. To help these kids catch up, we need to give them intentional, intensive opportunities for language and literacy development in preschool. They need to learn MORE in preschool than more advantaged children.

What does our project do?
The goals of Partnerships for Literacy are:

• Classrooms will offer environments rich in oral language and relevant print, and support children’s development of oral language, phonological awareness, print awareness, and alphabet knowledge.
• Teachers will develop the knowledge and skills for the effective use of research based strategies to teach children language and literacy skills.
• Teachers will infuse research-based instructional practices for intentional teaching of language and literacy skills into the daily curriculum.
• Teachers will use ongoing assessments to document children’s progress and modify instruction for children identified as at-risk for reading failure.
• Preschool children and their families will successfully transition from preschool to the K-12 system.
• Parents will increase their involvement in their children’s developing literacy.

Staff Development: Our staff development program includes facilitated group sessions featuring the national HeadsUp! Reading (HUR) distance-learning program, targeted training on emerging topics of interest, and on-site mentoring and coaching to help teachers translate their learning into everyday practice. HUR is a course in 15 2-hour video broadcasts available to our project on videotape. Staff view the tapes in groups and/or individually and the groups meet with their Literacy Coaches to discuss the information covered in the program, and to develop and/or share their action plans as to how they will implement the concepts covered in their classrooms. Additional staff development has included a week-long summer intensive that included training on the project’s literacy curriculum, planning for a comprehensive literacy program in developmentally appropriate preschool classrooms and schedules, and practice in specific instructional strategies to use in the preschool classrooms.

Curriculum: Scholastic’s curriculum, Building Language for Literacy, forms the foundation for insuring that literacy instruction is woven throughout the preschool day. Curriculum content is drawn from this curriculum, from emerging children’s interests, from core concepts in major content areas, and from parent input. Teachers use the Puget Sound ESD’s ECEAP/Head Start Early Learning Goals as the framework for building the overall curriculum.

Parent Involvement: Parents develop new knowledge and skills in how to foster children's learning at home by participating in site-based family literacy activities. The project builds on and expands the successful parent-to-parent Peer Literacy Advocate and Men Count programs that have been developed by PSESD’s ECEAP and Head Start programs. Through these programs, interested parents receive special training and return to their sites to teach other parents about literacy activities, the importance of men in children’s lives, and how both parents can support children’s development in language and literacy. In addition, each site plans meaningful parent involvement and education activities such as parent-child fieldtrips that build on the classroom curriculum and theme.

Collaboration: Partnerships for Literacy is working to build an effective collaboration model between early learning programs, parents, and Tacoma Public Schools' kindergartens to create a common language, understanding, and shared knowledge and practice to support children's development. Early Reading First is linked with the Tacoma Public School's K-12 literacy initiatives and Reading First programs, through shared staff training opportunities and other community linkages events.

Evaluation: In-depth, ongoing evaluation is being done to demonstrate the project's effectiveness in preparing preschool children for lasting school success. The evaluation includes assessments of children, classroom observations, and assessment of teachers' knowledge of literacy concepts.

What's in it for the teaching staff, the classrooms and the children?
Teachers are the ones who make this project work! We have built in lots of support for teaching staff, including Literacy Coaches to work on-site individually with each teaching team, funding for substitutes and for pay for extra time teachers spend in training, funds to purchase materials for the classroom, and funds to pay for interpreters and bilingual assistants to help with English Language Learners. There are also funds for release time for Kindergarten teachers to begin the collaboration around transition for children and families.