From Babbling to Books

Program description

Young children who perform better than their peers in reading do so for several reasons, but one of the most overlooked is this – lots of family talk. Far too many young children come to school with poor oral language skills because they just don't know enough words. The good news is that helping a young child is simple. By engaging kids in rich stories and having meaningful conversations with them, you – as a parent or a daycare provider or a preschool teacher – can help improve their oral language skills, which will eventually help them become better readers.

This 60-minute webcast stresses the importance of working with young children early to develop language and pre-reading skills. It will provide adults who work with young children with research-based strategies that can help lay the foundation for building strong readers. This webcast is sponsored in part by Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company.

From Babbling to Books: Building Pre-Reading Skills is available for purchase at our online store, LearningStore.

Presenters

Todd R. Risley is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Alaska and former professor of human development and senior scientist of the Bureau of Child Research at the University of Kansas. He is the co-author of Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children and Learning to Talk.

Sharon Landesman Ramey is the director of the Center for Health and Education at Georgetown University. Drs. Sharon and Craig Ramey are widely considered to have done the most extensive work to date on what permanently enhances development in young children. Their numerous studies have shown dramatic gains in learning and accomplishment as the result of nurturing care in early childhood.

Julie Washington is a professor in the department of audiology and speech language pathology at Wayne State University. Her research focus is language development and language disorders in African American children at the time of school entry and emergent literacy skills of high-risk preschoolers.

Recommended resources

Articles about pre-reading skills

• A Child Becomes a Reader: Proven Ideas for Parents from Research — Birth to Preschool (336K PDF)*, (Partnership for Reading)
• Taking Delight in Words: Using Oral Language to Build Young Children's Vocabularies (American Educator)
• The Importance of Phonemic Awareness in Learning to Read (SEDL Letter)
• The Concurrent Development of Phonological Awareness, Word Recognition, and Spelling (American Educational Research Association)
• The Importance of Home Environment (Hart & Risley study)
• The Development of Literacy in Preschool and Primary Grades: Work by the Center for Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (Must be a subscriber), (The Elementary School Journal)

Books by our presenters

The links below to Amazon.com are provided for your convenience. A portion of your purchase helps support Reading Rockets. Thank you!

• Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of a Young American Child
  By Betty Hart and Todd Risley
• Right From Birth
  By Drs. Sharon and Craig Ramey
• Malik Goes to School: Examining the Language Skills of African American Students from Preschool-5th Grade
  By Holly K. Craig and Julie A. Washington