Early Childhood Development Through Reading

1. Early Childhood Development Through Reading COM 215 Service Project; Michael Finnegan, Gerson Ramirez, Christina Ortiz, Amanda Iswan, Samantha O’Neill

2. Children who are read to at home have a higher success rate in school. • Video

3. Facts According to a 2000 study by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a division of the U.S. Department of Education children who were read to frequently are more likely to: • count to 20, or higher than those who were not (60% vs. 44%) • write their own names (54% vs. 40%) • read or pretend to read (77% vs. 57%) • recognized all letters of the alphabet (26% vs. 14%)

4. How To Help • Provide more reading material in your home • Plan reading time with your children into week • Bring your children to reading events held at libraries and schools • Insure day cares, schools and camps provide reading time • Volunteer at local libraries, schools and camps to read to children

5. Selecting the Organization • Programs looked into: • New Haven Reads • Coordinating Council for Children • Habitat for Humanity • Kookies for Kuhn We chose the Child literacy development program at the Hamden Library, because it’s purpose was in sync with our objective to help the community in an impactful and personal way

6. Plan for Change • After contacting several agencies the Hamden Library was a perfect fit for our group. • This allowed us to implement our change objective by finding a good suitor for our project • One of the benefits of working with the Hamden library, was that they helped facilitate the reading material. • The representative at the library was very helpful in establishing a time, date and place within the library for our project to go about.

7. Library Flyer

8. The Event • Engaging the kids through song • Keeping their attention with books • Tying it up with a game/combo of reading and singing • Parental reaction

9. Putting a Project together: • Split up group members for different tasks • Assessed the event and how successful it was • Worked as a group to create our paper and presentation • Cohesive group members • Now a well-oiled machine!

10. Successful? • Yes! • However… - just a small dent in the kids who need to be read to - mothers who came were already “regulars”

11. Other Programs • Issue isn’t lack of programs or books!

12. We learned… • How much a difference reading in early childhood can make on a person’s entire learning and life • There are countless books designed specifically to help engage children and get them excited about learning! • Such a simple thing could impact a child’s entire future.

13. “Next Time…” • Advertise better so we can get others aside from the library “regulars” • Reach out to families who don’t understand the importance of reading to kids • Find ways to further preach the importance to reading in childhood development and the existence of these programs in libraries and such.

14. Resources • National Center for Education Statistics http://nces.ed.gov/ • Hamden Public Library Kids’ Space http://www.hamdenlibrary.org/children.htm • New Haven Reads http://newhavenreads.org/