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Bring Books To Life triples number of family literary experiences

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Reading to young children makes them smarter, healthier and better prepared for life.

FARMINGTON – Bring Books To Life program bridges the gap between having books and using books.

Books are an opportunity to strengthen families, particularly when parents read to their kids. Reading to young children makes them smarter, healthier and better prepared for life, according to the Raising Readers website.

Every parent of a child in Maine knows the Raising Readers program. It means free books at birth and at their doctor’s offices for all Mainers until the age of five. The Raising Readers mission conveys that “ The simple act of placing books in children’s hands reinforces the powerful understanding that literacy begins well before children enter kindergarten.” Research by the Council on Early Childhood demonstrates that 34% of all children entering kindergarten in the U.S. lack the basic language skills needed to learn how to read. This problem increases in families that are economically disadvantaged. There is a 30 million word gap in language skills by the age of three, between children from the wealthiest families and the poorest.

“Free books are wonderful,” says Danielle Hamlin, Site Coordinator at the Farmington Early Learning Center and an advocate for family literacy, “but for some parents the power of the book can get lost and so books aren’t used.”

All parents want their children to learn to read and love books; however, some parents aren’t comfortable with books. Perhaps they don’t read well, or they don’t know how to engage their kids with books. Danielle saw a need for parents she works with to have a bridge from just having a book to actually reading the book. As she discovered, parents may not take the time or have the resources to download and print the activities from the Raising Readers website. This is how the Bring Books to Life Program at the Farmington Early Learning Center got started.

BBTL operates with collaboration between Literacy Volunteers of Franklin and Somerset Counties and Community Concepts, which administers the Headstart program at the Early Learning Center. It’s called a “book club” by the participants; parents invited to a monthly group reading session and provided brand new children’s books, along with activities matched to the book. The goal is for parents to learn how to have fun with books and be more comfortable using books at home. A conversation about the books launches at each session: “what will happen in the story next? Why do you think that will happen?” Every family gets a learning activity kit matched with the book and an activity is demonstrated, allowing parents to try it. Then there is a discussion about how last month’s activities and reading went.

Bring Books to Life, initiated as a pilot in 2016, was so successful, that the board at the United Way of the Tri-Valley Area voted unanimously to fund a full year in 2017 with their Venture Grant for new projects. 100 percent of the 15 participants reported having positive experiences with books at home and 80 percent of them tripled their number of literacy experiences. UWTVA sees the potential of this program to broaden the reach of increasing family literacy at other Headstart programs in the area.

Danielle’s idea to solve the problem of literacy involvement for parents with economic disadvantages is modeled after the New Books, New Readers program, co-administered by LVFSC and the Maine Humanities Council. The program model is a book discussion group for adults, using children’s books as the vehicle for discussion, organized around a theme, such as problem solving. A tutor provides guidance about how to use the pictures and text as clues to how the theme is expressed in the story, models reading comprehension methods with think-alouds about the text, and uses effective questioning to engage critical thinking skills. As the group dynamic develops into a sustained level of comfort and trust, the participants gain an ability to see truth in story as it applies to their lives and others’. Not only are individual perspectives evolving due to this program, it is also through this process of monthly practice and guidance around reading comprehension that literacy is strengthened, as demonstrated in research by Garner and Bochna (2004). “Novice readers are able to transfer knowledge from one literacy activity to another after exposure to instructional strategies that use repeated presentation, explicit explanation, teacher modeling, and questioning.”

Being comfortable with reading comprehension equals being comfortable with sharing books. Sharing books equals stronger family literacy. Danielle cites several examples of the BBTL program effectiveness. Participants build self-confidence, which helps improve their children’s confidence. She sees increased parent involvement in literacy events around the school as evidenced by the artful book related decorations all over the building. Most of the children in the building excitedly ask for the next book. Due to increased confidence, several of the parents collaborated on writing a letter to the state legislature to request more Headstart funding. One father who didn’t want to read at the first session, read comfortably out loud in the group by the end and was able to read, write, and ask questions at his child’s kindergarten registration. The books have become popular and are often read aloud in the classrooms. Even the staff used a book one day to discuss ways to solve a problem with fatigue and morale. It worked! Now the whole staff uses the language and ideas from the book to propel their work forward.

The effect of literacy is cumulative: each of the literacy skills acquired benefits all members of the household or community involved. Many of the parents report using the books as tools to have conversations with their children about handling emotions, in addition to having fun with the books. Low literacy is a condition that can be overcome when stories are shared in community; when parents read with their children.

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1 Comment

  1. What a great and much needed program.I dearly hope the idea catches on!

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