Every Child Ready to Read: Does It Really Work?

PLA 2014 in Indy

Every Child Ready to Read: Does It Really Work? Evaluating the Program

Presented information and results from the Views2 Project conducted by the University Of Washington, Information School, Katie Campana, speaker and Project Manager

PDF handouts are available at:

http://www.placonference.org/programs/, Every Child Ready to Read, Does It Really Work? These handouts are goals and behaviors on the part of librarians and children in each skill area of ECRR. They were used as part of the research process, but could easily be used as evaluative tools for any storytime presenter. The suggestion in the program was to use these handouts as such, but more as a learning tool than as an assessment of librarian skills. Working with another librarian was also suggested.

Project Views was a two year research project that was conducted by the University of Washington along with many supporting organizations. It is an acronym for: Valuable Initiatives in Early Learning that Work Successfully. Forty libraries were selected for study. Storytimes were observed and assessed before and after focused training in ECRR.  Librarians in the experimental group received focused training; those in the control group received no extra training. Interestingly, many of the libraries in the study were already purposefully implementing early literacy into storytimes. The difference was that the experimental group received significant training in ECRR.

Study Results:

“When comparing the observations from Year 1 and Year 2 for the control group…NO statistically significant changes in the librarians’ programs or the children’s behaviors” were found. AND

“When comparing the observations from Year 1 and Year 2 for the experimental group…there WERE several statistically significant changes in both the librarians’ programs and the children’s behaviors.”

There was a strong correlation between the focused ECRR program and early literacy behavior exhibited by the children.

The bottom line is that “Purposeful focus on early literacy principles makes a difference in programs and in children’s early literacy behaviors.”

The evaluation tools may be used by librarians to use as planning tools. Start with the age of the children and then choose the early literacy skill(s) that will be the focus of the storytime.

Purposeful and intentional focus on early literacy principles makes a difference in programs and in children’s early literacy behaviors.

Librarians need to model for parents to make the teaching most impactful.

To stay connected with Project VIEWS you can:

• Twitter: #VIEWS2

• Facebook: www.facebook.com/views2

• Website: http://digitalyouth.ischool.uw.edu/