LET’S BEGIN WITH THE LETTER PEOPLE
OVERVIEW
Let’s Begin with the Letter People is a program designed to enhance early language and literacy skills. The program targets many areas of language development including building letter knowledge, phonological awareness, language and motivation to read, development of vocabulary, and receptive and expressive language development. The Let’s Begin program also has a special emphasis on letter knowledge and phonological awareness. An experimental evaluation of the program in which sites were randomly assigned found that it improved children’s auditory comprehension, vocabulary, phonological awareness, letter and word identification, and sound awareness/rhyming.
DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM
Target population: Children with normal development attending pre-kindergarten programs
The Let’s Begin with the Letter People program is designed for pre-kindergarten classrooms. Teachers are extensively trained in the program and are given a variety of interactive and printed materials. The curriculum revolves around the Letter People, called “Huggables”, who are the center of stories and language activities. The curriculum has 26 units which include 7 different areas: oral language and listening, alphabetic/story knowledge and writing, science and math, personal and social development, motor skills, art and music, and taking learning to the home. The lessons are interactive and children learn in small groups and also learn with personalized examples.
EVALUATION(S) OF PROGRAM
Assel, M. A., Landry, S.
H., Swank, P. R., & Gunnewig, S. (2007). An
evaluation of curriculum, setting, and mentoring on the performance of children
enrolled in pre-kindergarten.
Evaluated population: 603 pre-kindergarten children who were enrolled in three types of full-day programs, Title 1, Universal Pre-K, and Head Start. Children were 4 years of age at the start of the evaluation and 51% male. Two-hundred forty-five children were in Head Start programs, 213 were in Title 1 programs, and 145 were in Universal Pre-K programs. The program types had quite different breakdowns in racial composition such that the Head Start programs were composed primarily of African-America and Hispanic children, Title 1 programs were composed primarily of Hispanic and Caucasian children, and the Universal Pre-K programs were composed primarily of Caucasian children. Overall, the sample was 21% African-American, 42% Hispanic, 29% Caucasian, and 8% other ethnicity.
Approach: Schools were recruited from a school
district in
Results: Overall, children exposed to either curriculum did better than children in the control group, especially those in Head Start programs. More specifically, children in the Let’s Begin program had greater auditory comprehension gains than children in the control group. There was more growth in language comprehension in Head Start classes when compared with Title 1 and Universal Pre-K classes. The program had no impact on language comprehension in Title 1 and Universal Pre-K classes. There were greater increases in language skills in the Doors to Discovery program compared with the Let’s Begin classrooms. The researchers note that this finding may be due to the differences between mentoring and non-mentoring assignment. In Title 1 classes, children in the Let’s Begin program who were mentored outperformed children in the control group, but the control group outperformed them if they did not have access to the teacher-mentoring component.
Children in both treatment programs had larger improvements in vocabulary than children in the control group. Again, those in the Head Start classrooms improved more than Universal and Title 1 classrooms. Children in both treatment programs also had greater improvement than those in the control condition on letter and word identification. This impact was especially strong in Head Start classrooms.
The Let’s Begin program outperformed the Doors to Discovery program when the mentoring component was added; but the Doors to Discovery program had a greater impact than the Let’s Begin program when mentoring was absent. Children in treatment classrooms experienced greater growth in rhyming skills compared with those in the control condition. In Universal Pre-K classrooms, children who received the Let’s Begin program experienced greater growth in rhyming skills compared with the Doors to Discovery program. Children in Head Start classrooms receiving either of the interventions had larger improvements in phonological awareness than their counterparts in the control condition.
Across most findings, the researchers noted that the Let’s Begin with the Letter People program was enhanced by the mentoring program for teachers, and that students in conditions whose teachers did not receive the mentoring program did not improve as much as those whose teachers were mentored.
SOURCES FOR MORE INFORMATION
Program curriculum and supplies are available for purchase at: http://www.abramsandcompany.com/lets_begin_with_letter_people.aspx
References
Assel, M. A., Landry, S. H.,
Swank, P. R., & Gunnewig, S. (2007). An
evaluation of curriculum, setting, and mentoring on the performance of children
enrolled in pre-kindergarten.
Program categorized in this guide according to the following:
Evaluated participant ages: pre-kindergarten / Program age ranges in the Guide: early childhood
Program components: child care/early childhood education; mentoring/tutoring; school-based
Measured outcomes: education and cognitive development
KEYWORDS: Early Childhood (0-5), Children (3-11), Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, White or Caucasian, Urban, Suburban, Preschool, School-based, Child Care, Early Childhood Education, Mentoring, Education, Academic Achievement
Program information last updated 10/26/07
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© Child Trends 2003 |
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