Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

Azalea Grant, Jamia Gibbons, David Alvarez and Alex Smith, (from left) all 4 years old, sit with books that are part of the Raising a Reader and 'Read to Me' book-bag programs at California Young World Preschools in Sunnyvale.




Program raises readers

A program encourages parents to read with preschool children and prepare for kindergarten

By Amy Jenkins

Several Sunnyvale pre schools and child-care centers are participating in a program, called Raising a Reader, that aims to instill the love for reading into pre school-aged children and encourage parents to read to them at home.

Raising a Reader is an initiative of the Peninsula Community Foundation and is funded by their Center for Venture Philanthropy. Launched into 23 cities in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties in September 2000, the program provides low-income pre school children with a bag full of books, gives child-care providers teaching manuals about early literacy and provides an instructional video for parents called "Read Aloud: Share a Book with Me." The videotapes are available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Korean, Cambodian and closed captioning.

"This program is created to work for families that do not speak English or even know how to read," Carol Gray, director of the Center of Venture Philanthropy, said. "The video has won five awards and makes it fun for families who have no money for books and can't read."

"Over 10 years of research supports the premise that the single most important activity for building and understanding skills essential for reading success appears to be reading aloud to children," the Raising a Reader memorandum of understanding states. "Nationally, one out of five children enter kindergarten lacking basic print familiarity skills, and one out of three children do not recognize alphabet letters."

California Young World in Sunnyvale is one of the few schools selected by the Santa Clara office of education and the Head Start program to participate in the Raising a Reader program, out of many schools interested in participating, says Carrie Smith, a spokesperson for the organization. Smith says California Young was chosen because it's a private non profit organization that leases property to various preschools and receives state subsidies.

Before the program began, teachers at California Young World attended an orientation at which they learned how to implement the program and basic tips about reading aloud to students.

"This program is great for kids that don't have the money to buy books and no one teaches them to read at home," Smith says.

So far, more than 2,500 families in the Head Start program in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties--and 500 families in 35 non-Head Starts, such as California Young World--have been reached through Raising a Reader. Head Start is a federal nonprofit that began in 1964 and serves low-income families with child care.

"The program Raising a Reader began in the Santa Clara Valley because parents were asking what the Head Start program was doing about literacy," says Audrey Munoz, regional manager of the Santa Clara Office of Education. "This program aims to build pre-literacy skills for kids ages 0 to 5, since one in three children enter kindergarten lacking basic pre-reading skills, and we want to change that. We are very excited about the program, and so are all the families involved."

Raising a Reader begins when the preschool children receive a red canvas book bag with hardcover, award-winning English, Spanish, bilingual and wordless picture books. California Young World preschool classes are given 26 book bags with 104 different books that are rotated weekly among families within the class.

The next step is the children are given a blue book bag that is theirs to keep as they learn about resources available at the library.

"In the blue bags are library card applications where kids can learn how to check out books," Smith says. "Head Start also provides a gift of two nice books the kids can keep."

Libraries are involved in the program through teaching children about library resources, holding Read Aloud training for parents and teachers, and holding activities to support early literacy in the communities.

The goal of the Raising a Reader program is to reach 36,000 poor children and their families by July 2004 and to increase by 15 percent the number of low-income parents reading to their infant and preschool children three or more times per week. However, according to Gray, the program has already surpassed this goal.

"Raising a Reader has been highly successful as shown in an evaluation of Head Start families in the Santa Clara County with and without the Raising a Reader program," Gray says. She adds that there has been a 23 percent increase in parents reading frequently to their children in monolingual Spanish-speaking households and a 21 percent increase in taking children to the library frequently. Overall, she says there has been a 56 percent increase in parents lap reading to their children because of the Raising a Reader program.

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