From katie.anderson at state.or.us Thu Mar 1 11:22:02 2012 From: katie.anderson at state.or.us (Katie Anderson) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 19:22:02 +0000 Subject: [RFHF] Target grant for Early Childhood Reading now accepting applications! Message-ID: <640435851FD7CB4AB3C4BE0D1963BA241C36215D@OSLEXCHANGE.osl.state.or.us.local> Today, Target begins accepting applications for next year's "Early Childhood Reading Grants." They will be accepting applications for these $2,000 grants for 60 days. Go to http://sites.target.com/site/en/company/page.jsp?contentId=WCMP04-031821 for more information and to apply. Questions? Email: Community.Relations at target.com. Katie Anderson, Library Development Services * Youth Services Consultant * Oregon Center for the Book Coordinator * Oregon State Library, 250 Winter St. NE, Salem, OR 97301 katie.anderson at state.or.us, 503-378-2528 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From katie.anderson at state.or.us Mon Mar 5 12:35:35 2012 From: katie.anderson at state.or.us (Katie Anderson) Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2012 20:35:35 +0000 Subject: [RFHF] In Wired magazine: "Does Preschool Matter?" Message-ID: <640435851FD7CB4AB3C4BE0D1963BA241C364F00@OSLEXCHANGE.osl.state.or.us.local> Hello! I just read this interesting article from Wired magazine over lunch and thought many of you would be interested in reading it too: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/does-preschool-matter/all/1 . As you read the article it's important to keep in mind the author is strictly talking about academics, not the social-emotional development that takes place in preschool. Here are a few things that stand out to me: * ...the benefits of preschool are not equally distributed. Rather, they seem to be particularly essential for those kids from the most disadvantaged households. * How can preschool alter the relative contribution of nature and nurture? And why does pre-k education make genetics more important? The answer has to do with the constraints on mental development. When kids are denied an enriched environment, when they grow up in a stressed home without lots of books or conversation, this lack of nurture holds back their nature. As a result, the children are unable to reach their full genetic potential. * ...preschool significantly closed the achievement gap between rich and poor kids. However, this winnowing of the gap was entirely due to the raised scores among those from disadvantaged homes. In fact, Tucker-Drob found that children raised in wealthier homes got no [academic] benefit at all from pre-k education, as their test scores remained flat. * when it came to the mental ability of 10-month-olds, the home environment was the key variable, across every socioeconomic class. * the mental ability of 2-year-olds can be profoundly affected by the socioeconomic status of their parents. The end result is that their potential is held back. Katie Anderson, Library Development Services * Youth Services Consultant * Oregon Center for the Book Coordinator * Oregon State Library, 250 Winter St. NE, Salem, OR 97301 katie.anderson at state.or.us, 503-378-2528 Does Preschool Matter? By Jonah Lehrer March 5, 2012 | For many kids, the most important years of schooling come before they can even read. Consider the groundbreaking work of the Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman, who has repeatedly documented the power of early childhood education. One of his best case studies is the Perry Preschool Experiment, which looked at 123 low income African-American children from Yspilanti, Michigan. (All the children had IQ scores between 75 and 85.) When the children were three years old, they were randomly assigned to either a treatment group, and given a high-quality preschool education, or to a control group, which received no preschool education at all. The subjects were then tracked over the ensuing decades, with the most recent analysis comparing the groups at the age of 40. The differences, even decades after the intervention, were stark: Adults assigned to the preschool program were 20 percent more likely to have graduated from high school and 19 percent less likely to have been arrested more than five times. They got much better grades, were more likely to remain married and were less dependent on welfare programs. This is why, according to Heckman and colleagues, every dollar invested in preschool for at-risk children reaps somewhere between eight and nine dollars in return. Why is preschool so important? The answer is obvious: the young mind is wonderfully malleable, able to develop new habits with relative ease. Furthermore, the benefits of preschool are not equally distributed. Rather, they seem to be particularly essential for those kids from the most disadvantaged households. A new paper in Psychological Science by Elliot Tucker-Drob, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, helps explain why this is the case. He wanted to tease out the relative contributions of nature and nurture, genes and environment, in the improvement of academic skills during pre-kindergarten education. His data set made these questions possible: Tucker-Drob used a national sample of 1,200 identical and fraternal twins born to 600 families of various incomes and ethnicities across the United States in 2001. Because he was comparing identical twins, who share 100 percent of their genes, and fraternal twins, who share 50 percent, he was able to calculate the relative genetic and environmental influences on achievement at age five, both for those kids who had been enrolled in preschool and those who went without. His main finding might, at first glance, seem somewhat paradoxical. According to the twin data, family environmental factors - the nurture side of the equation - accounted for about 70 percent of the variance in test scores for children who did not attend preschool. In contrast, those same family factors only accounted for about 45 percent of variance among children who attended preschool. How can preschool alter the relative contribution of nature and nurture? And why does pre-k education make genetics more important? The answer has to do with the constraints on mental development. When kids are denied an enriched environment, when they grow up in a stressed home without lots of books or conversation, this lack of nurture holds back their nature. As a result, the children are unable to reach their full genetic potential. (Razib Khan says it best: "When you remove the environmental variance, the genetic variance remains.") The gift of preschool, then, is that closes the yawning gap between the life experiences of wealthy and poor toddlers, thus making whatever differences remain more important. This effect was clearly demonstrated by the standardized test data, as Tucker-Drob looked at changes in scores correlated with preschool. Not surprisingly, he found that preschool significantly closed the achievement gap between rich and poor kids. However, this winnowing of the gap was entirely due to the raised scores among those from disadvantaged homes. In fact, Tucker-Drob found that children raised in wealthier homes got no benefit at all from pre-k education, as their test scores remained flat. Because these kids were already receiving plenty of cognitive stimulation at home, it didn't really matter if they were also stimulated at school. It's as if their brains were already maxed out. This latest study builds on previous work by Tucker-Drob showing that the impact of parents, at least relative to genetics, largely depends on socioeconomic status. Last year, he looked at 750 pairs of American twins who were given a test of mental ability at the age of 10 months and then again at the age of 2. As in this latest study, Tucker-Drob used twin data to tease apart the importance of nature and nurture at various points along the socioeconomic continuum. The first thing he found is that, when it came to the mental ability of 10-month-olds, the home environment was the key variable, across every socioeconomic class. This shouldn't be too surprising: most babies are housebound, their lives dictated by the choices of their parents. Results for the 2-year-olds, however, were dramatically different. In children from poorer households, the decisions of parents still mattered. In fact, the researchers estimated that the home environment accounted for approximately 80% of the individual variance in mental ability among poor 2-year-olds. The effect of genetics was negligible. The opposite pattern appeared in 2-year-olds from wealthy households. For these kids, genetics primarily determined performance, accounting for 50% of all variation in mental ability. For parents, then, the correlation appears to be clear: As wealth increases, the choices of adults play a much smaller role in determining the mental ability of their children. There are two lessons here. The first lesson is that upper-class parents worry too much. Although adults tend to fret over the details of parenting - Is it better to play the piano or the violin? Should I be a Tiger Mom or a Parisian mom? What are the long-term effects of sleep training? - these details are mostly insignificant. In the long run, the gift of money is that gives a child constant access to a world of stimulation and enrichment, thus allowing them to fulfill their genetic potential. The greatest luxury we can give our children, it turns out, is the luxury of being the type of parent that doesn't matter at all. The second lesson is that stunning developmental inequalities set in almost immediately. As Tucker-Drob demonstrates, even the mental ability of 2-year-olds can be profoundly affected by the socioeconomic status of their parents. The end result is that their potential is held back. And this is why we need good preschools. They are not a panacea, and their impact varies depending on quality, but early childhood education is still an essential first step towards eliminating the achievement gap. Life is unfair; some kids will always be born into households that have much less. Nevertheless, we have a duty to ensure that every child has a chance to learn what they're capable of. Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired and the author of Imagine, How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist. He's also contributed to the New Yorker, the NY Times Magazine and WNYC's Radiolab. Follow @jonahlehrer on Twitter. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From katie.anderson at state.or.us Thu Mar 29 15:00:25 2012 From: katie.anderson at state.or.us (Katie Anderson) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 22:00:25 +0000 Subject: [RFHF] ECRR 2nd Ed: Learn how Klamath County Library is using it! Message-ID: <640435851FD7CB4AB3C4BE0D1963BA241C3A2954@OSLEXCHANGE.osl.state.or.us.local> Hi! This winter Klamath County Library presented two of the new Every Child Ready to Read 2nd Edition adult and child workshops and generously are letting me share their experience with you! Attached are .pdfs of the PowerPoint slides they used to present their workshops-please keep in mind the notes they added to the slides were written for their eyes only to help them during the presentation so please excuse any grammatical or spelling errors! Most libraries should have the DVDs with these PowerPoints on them that they can edit for their own use just as Klamath County Library has done. For those of who don't own the ECRR2nd Ed kit and therefore can't access these PowerPoints, the kit (which includes the DVDs with these PowerPoints) is available to check out via interlibrary loan from the State Library (details below). Here is what Dru from Klamath County Library said after using the updated curriculum: I really liked it. I am attaching my edited version for the parent class and for the caregivers in case you would like to see what I did. The parents stayed engaged the whole time. I had two parents come and share with me that they learned something new and enjoyed it. It seemed easier to edit and fit to the audiences I had and [they didn't have] intimidating language. I felt like I shared good information!! I have defiantly found that the more hands on actual songs, rhymes, actions , flannel etc I can share the better response. Both really liked having things to take home to use. The caregivers were writing down information during the presentation!! I would like to thank the staff at Klamath County Library for so generously sharing the PowerPoint slides they worked so hard to edit for their presentations. Enjoy! Katie Katie Anderson, Library Development Services * Youth Services Consultant * Oregon Center for the Book Coordinator * Oregon State Library, 250 Winter St. NE, Salem, OR 97301 katie.anderson at state.or.us, 503-378-2528 Title--Every child ready to read @ your library [kit] Pub. Info.--Chicago : ALSC/PLA, c2011 Edition--2nd ed Healthy Start and other non-library staff: The above title is available to check out. Here is what you can do to check it out: * Go to your library's website and look up the title in the online catalog. * If your library has this title, put it on hold/check it out as you would any other library item. * If your library does not have this title, call either your personal contact at the library or call the main library number and ask for the reference desk. * Provide the full title information listed above and tell them you would like to check it out via interlibrary loan. The librarian will be able to help you through that process. Library staff: This title is available for interlibrary loan from the Oregon State Library. If you would like to request this or other materials from the Oregon State Library please use your library's established interlibrary loan process or send your full name, the name of your library, complete title information, shipping address, and a phone number to the document delivery department at library.request at state.or.us or (fax) 503-588-7119. Items will be checked out to your library, not to you personally, for 4 weeks (print materials) or 2 weeks (videos). Materials will be delivered via mail or Orbis Cascade Alliance Courier, and you may return them the same way. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.gif Type: image/gif Size: 2310 bytes Desc: image002.gif URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: FunForParentAndChildren.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 838780 bytes Desc: FunForParentAndChildren.pdf URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: FunWithWordsForCaregiversAndChildren.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 1314311 bytes Desc: FunWithWordsForCaregiversAndChildren.pdf URL: