Research-based policies, practices and programs

Language and literacy development starts at birth, and North Carolina should have a shared statewide plan to intentionally build those skills in very young children. North Carolina could use the North Carolina Foundations for Early Learning and Development as a core tool to create a comprehensive state level plan for supporting very young children’s early language and literacy skills. The state’s strategy to promote reading during the first three years of children’s lives should:

• Incorporate findings from brain science about young children’s language development
• Support and engage families, as children’s first teachers, using best practices
• Invest in evidence-informed programs – both universal programs and those targeted to at-risk children

Incorporate brain science. The Language Development and Communication domain in the Foundations provides standards and goals specific to three areas of early language development and communication:

• Learning to communicate
• Foundations for reading
• Foundations for writing¹

Each of these goal areas also includes developmental indicators for infants, younger toddlers, older toddlers, young preschoolers, and older preschoolers, along with strategies for parents and primary caregivers.²

Support and engage families. The National Governor’s Association encourages states to engage parents in promoting early literacy by:

• Incorporating parent engagement in existing early care and education and K-3 policies, practices, and intervention planning
• Investing in programs that increase parents’ capacity to build their children’s language and literacy skills. These could include home visiting programs, public-private partnerships to promote parent-child book reading and build home libraries, and early literacy campaigns targeting parents.³

Invest in what works. Research has identified practices and programs that encourage reading and help adults read more effectively with children (some of which are noted on this webpage). Research collaboratives like the national Bridging the Word Gap Network are working to increase our knowledge of what works in early reading. The Network includes more than 100 researchers, policy makers, practitioners, and funders who have come together to address the 30 million-word gap between children of higher- versus lower-income families and reduce the number of children who enter kindergarten with language and literacy delays. The network includes seven workgroups, each of which has a research agenda:

• Interventions aimed at parents
• Interventions for non-parent caregivers and child care
• Pediatric and public health care setting interventions
• Identifying how family context may affect the implementation language-promoting interventions
• Interventions for children who are dual language learners
• Population- and community-level interventions
• Learning what analytic methods, designs and measurement approaches work best to advance early literacy.⁴

The use of technology – smart phones, tablets and computers – can help or hinder young children’s early literacy.¹ Nine in ten parents report that by age two their children are watching various forms of media.²

Parents should use media with their children. Research shows no learning gains for very young children using media alone. When parents and young children use technology together, however, children’s language skills grow.³ Children as young as 15 months can learn new vocabulary from technology if parents are sitting next to them, reading the words and talking interactively with them.⁴ The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends this approach to media use by very young children.

The importance of parents engaging in media use with young children is echoed by recent federal guidelines. The guidelines state that technology:

• Can be a tool for learning, when used appropriately
• Should be used to increase access to learning opportunities for all children
• May be used to strengthen relationships among parents, families, early educators, and young children
• Is more effective for learning when adults and peers interact or co-view with young children⁵   

Research-based apps and resources can educate parents and communities on how to support early literacy. There are research-based apps and resources for parents of young children and the communities they live in that have been shown to advance children’s early literacy and school readiness. A few examples include:

• Text4Baby, a free app hosted by Zero to Three that pushes information to new mothers who sign up for the service⁶
• Tips by Text and Ready4K, Stanford University apps shown to improve preschool literacy⁷ and school readiness⁸
• Boston Basics Campaign, a set of videos aimed at parents that are designed to promote more positive, intentional, everyday parent-child interactions, including reading with children⁹
• Reading Rockets: Launching New Readers, a public television series designed to engage parents, caregivers and teachers in developing their children’s literacy, which includes TV programs, parent tips by grade level and other resources.¹⁰
• Tap, Click and Read, an effort supported by the Campaign for Grade Level Reading, to promote the use of effective technology in early literacy development, which includes videos showing successful implementation in communities, along with other print and multi-media resources to help encourage early learning and literacy among families and communities.¹¹

In families where English is not the primary language or where parents are not comfortable readers of English, parents are more likely to support their children’s early literacy if they are encouraged to read and talk with their children in their native languages.¹ Other activities can also build literacy,² such as:

• Story-telling
• Reading wordless books
• Using rhymes, singing songs and chanting
• Watching television together
• Going together to the library

Children who are fluent in their native languages are more likely to feel good about their heritage.³ Young children who speak more than one language can quickly shift attention and switch tasks, which helps build executive function. By age three, some social-emotional skills are better developed in dual-language children than in their peers.⁴

North Carolina leads the nation in the steady growth of dual-language immersion programs in public schools. This growth has been driven by strong demand by parents and because the method has shown promise for increasing achievement for students who are still learning English. To date, each of North Carolina’s 115 school districts has established one or more dual-language immersion programs.⁵ Research results from the 2009-2010 evaluation study reveal that students in these programs make greater math and reading gains than students in non-dual language classrooms.⁶

As with parent-child interactions, interaction between children and their teachers builds children’s language and communication skills.

• More than Baby Talk, created by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina, supports infants and toddlers’ language and communication development, with a focus on teacher-child interactions.
• More Than Baby Talk: 10 Ways to Promote the Language and Communication Skills of Infants and Toddlers describes ten science-informed practices that early childhood teachers can use to promote early language and communication skills.¹ The practices could be used by parents and others as well.

Dialogic reading, a practice where adults prompt children with questions while reading with them, has been shown to be one of the most effective reading practices to promote early literacy skills.¹ The instructional video Hear and Say Reading with Toddlers explains dialogic reading to parents and early childhood educators. Hear and Say evaluations, based on parent-child reading before and after instruction, show significant improvements in reading style.²

The following programs can support families reading with their children. See our Programs webpage for program descriptions.

• Abriendo Puertas: Opening Doors Parenting Program
• Reach Out and Read
• Thirty Million Words
• Parents as Teachers
• Motheread