Contact: Aga Haupt
An early childhood education outreach effort now under way at Mississippi State is expected to help rural children throughout the state and elsewhere reach their potential in adulthood.
A part of the College of Education, the Early Childhood Institute recently launched a pilot project to encourage a desire to read in very young children. The Leaders in Literacy program--now being tested at eight certified child-care facilities in West Point and eight randomly chosen child-care providers in Greenville--offers on-site mentoring for teachers.
"Our goal is to support teachers in helping children maximize their potential brain power," said institute director Cathy W. Grace. Young children with increased literacy skills, including larger vocabularies and better recognition of letters and rhyming words, are more likely to become successful readers, she explained.
Institute staff members are providing technical support and assistance specifically to teachers of 4-year-olds and younger. These efforts include assistance in organizing lesson plans and schedules, as well as helping to pay for more books in the classrooms.
The project is funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Education, the Oxford-based Barksdale Reading Institute and the Michigan-based W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Program data will be analyzed later in the summer, Grace said.
"The program has been tremendously beneficial," said Irene Moore of Greenville. "My only regret is that we didn't get this sort of help years ago."
Moore, who directs the Rose Hill North Church Daycare, said the additional training provided to her staff has made the teachers more motivated and led to an increased interest in reading among the children at Rose Hill North.
Since teachers can't expect 3-year-old children to sit quietly at a desk, Grace said, "It's important for teachers to provide age-specific activities."
For very young children, literacy-enhancing activities may include reading books aloud, staging puppet shows, having children make and illustrate their own books, and discussing concepts from the readings with which children may have no experience.
"If a story involves a quilt, and a child has never seen a quilt, the child will not get a lot out of it," Grace said. "Inviting a guest to come and show quilts to the children would help them understand the story better."
As part of the assessment process, the project is quantifying time spent by teachers in literacy activities with the children, as well as the growth in language development among the students. In addition to evaluating the increased vocabularies of the children, centers in Greenville also will be evaluated on how well the students recognize letters and rhyming words.
"The early years are critical to learning many things that will assist children throughout their entire lives," Grace said. "We want to support the most influential people in children's lives, their teachers and parents, so that they can raise their children to be able to read, write, speak, and communicate in times of rapidly changing technology and workforce expectations."
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information, telephone Dr. Grace at (662) 325-4836.