Category Archives: Literacy by 10

When Alexiss Evans enrolled in the Ounce of Prevention Fund’s Parent University literacy program, she did so because she believed in the organization and because she wanted to give her daughter every possible opportunity to learn. “I’m one of those parents who, if [the Ounce says] something, I’ll do it,” she said. “I want to show support and be a team player.” Evans received text messages each weekday for six weeks. These texts suggested activities for Evans to do with her…

It works with diabetes patients, smokers trying to quit, and others: a text message reminding you to take your medication or resist the urge to light up. There’s even a Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University devoted to the idea. So what if we could put that same idea to work boosting literacy in very young children in low-income families? That’s the premise of Parent University, a six-week program originally designed by Chris Drew, now Director of Educator Initiatives at…

Today’s children are surrounded by digital media of all kinds. How will they ever learn to read? That question is at the heart of Seeding Reading: Investing in Children’s Literacy in a Digital Age, a new series of articles and analysis brought to you by New America’s Education Policy Program and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.  Over the next six months, we will be exploring early education and parenting initiatives that are harnessing new technologies; scrutinizing the…

To celebrate Children’s Book Week, the oldest literacy initiative in the country, we asked Cooney Center staff members to reflect on their favorite children’s books: the books whose spines we wore out, even if we knew the words by heart; the books that sparked hours of laughter and debate with our parents and friends and the books that helped us to become life-long readers. Did your favorites make the cut? Executive Director Michael Levine’s childhood favorites were Where the Wild…

What really matters for early-grade reading? That’s a question we tackled in a recent paper for policy makers and other non-academic audiences, titled “Launching Successful Readers:  The Role of ICT in Early-Grade Literacy Success.”  Our aim was to help guide and frame discussions about how to have more effective investments in technology for early-grade literacy, in both developed and developing countries, based on research about what really matters for literacy growth. No one disputes that many investments in technology for…