Annenberg study reinforces value of public television-based intervention in promoting early literacy
PHILADELPHIA (August 18, 2010) – An award-winning children’s PBS KIDS program, Between the Lions, when combined with teachers who are equipped with curriculum materials and who have received training, has consistently demonstrated its effectiveness in developing better reading skills for preschool children.
That is one result of an ongoing analysis of the Federally-funded “Ready to Learn” program, by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. The School’s Children and Media Lab has measured reading and literacy skills of public school students who participated in a program based classroom intervention using Between the Lions, related curriculum materials, and teachers who were trained to use the coursework.
“Consistently, very young students in classrooms where the program was used by teachers who had an array of teacher support outperformed their peers across almost all early literacy skills,” says Deborah Linebarger, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Communication and Director of the Children and Media Lab at Annenberg. “The student’s letter sound scores, one of the more sophisticated and challenging early literacy skills, improved by nearly 300 percent.
“The effects are greatest for print skills or inside-out skills, such as letter knowledge and phonological and phonemic awareness, and for those children who are at-risk for reading failure due to economic disadvantage,” Prof. Linebarger continued.
Since 2000 the Annenberg Children and Media Lab has evaluated the effectiveness of using Between the Lions and related support as a classroom intervention. Researchers have looked at a diversity of children, including poor rural children living on the Mississippi Delta, poor urban children living in large Northeastern and Midwestern cities, American Indians living in the Southwest, English Language Learners, and children with disabilities. In all cases using, viewing, and participating in classroom activities related to Between the Lions resulted in substantial growth in the key early literacy skills targeted by the program.
In the latest study, conducted during the 2008 – 2009 school year, the Annenberg team looked at reading and literacy skills results for 319 Mississippi preschool children, ranging in age from four to five years. As with a similar analysis during previous school years, children in the experimental groups outperformed their peers in the control group on a variety of measurements, including:
· Upper Case Letter Identification – students who watched knew 75 percent more letters than those who did not participate in the program.
· Lower Case Letter Identification – students who participated scored nearly 113 percent higher than their non-participating classmates.
· Picture naming skills – students who participated in the Between the Lions classroom project were able to identify 20 percent more objects, an index of vocabulary knowledge, compared to their peers who did not participate in the program.
Teachers participating in the classroom intervention were provided with 30 theme-based weekly lessons, copies of the related television programs, supporting books and other resources, including 96 hours of training and mentoring to help them use the educational literacy material.
Prof. Linebarger stressed the importance of educational resources like Between the Lions, especially for younger children from economically disadvantaged populations. “Early intervention is crucial because it shifts what would likely be poorer language and literacy development to more positive and accelerating trajectories,” she said. “The efficacy of using Between the Lions is one result of an ongoing analysis of the role that educational media can assume in bridging the achievement gap between low- and middle-income children’s literacy skills. “Not only did participation bridge the gap, in most cases, it surpassed it,” Prof. Linebarger said.
Between the Lions, distributed by PBS KIDS and produced by WGBH in Boston, Sirius Thinking, Ltd., and Mississippi Public Broadcasting, is a multimedia educational initiative created to help children ages three to seven acquire beginning reading skills. It is funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Education’s Ready to Learn grant, the Barksdale Reading Institute, and Chick-fil-A., Inc.
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