Learning for a Lifetime

Early Childhood Literacy: Fostering the Fundamentals

We are all too aware of the challenges facing our local school systems. In partnership with local schools and other agencies, the Library seeks to assist children with their literacy skills.

Up until the fourth grade, children learn to read. After that point, children read to learn. Consequently, children must enter school ready to learn and quickly hone their literacy skills. In middle school and high school, youth must continue to hone their skills and be encouraged to develop a lifelong habit of reading in order to succeed. The Library has designed programs to reach out to children at multiple points in their learning lives to help them achieve.

Early Childhood Literacy

Everyone agrees children need to succeed in school. While many factors influence how well a child does in an academic setting, their early intellectual growth plays a crucial role. According to the United Nations Children's Fund, "Investing in children from birth to age 3 is the only way to ensure that every child has the opportunity to reach his or her full potential." One key element of childhood development is the formation of literacy skills.

Creating a Foundation for Future Success

Children need to be exposed to books at a very early age – research has repeatedly demonstrated that when children listen to stories, they gain crucial language skills. Learning to read and write begins at infancy and continues throughout the toddler years. According to Dr. Paul Thompson with UCLA, "Recent neurodevelopment research has shown that even before children can read themselves, reading aloud to very young children is extremely beneficial to the child."

Unfortunately, many local children do not receive the early education they need. A 2002 report developed by Developmental Tasks for Kindergarten Readiness administered by Indianapolis Public Schools found that of the 3,158 children who entered kindergarten in 2002, 44‰ were not ready for school. Without the abilities necessary for a solid start, these children are at risk of academic difficulties that can affect their entire education. To further amplify the importance of children having a strong skill set when they enter school, the Carnegie Foundation report Ready to Learn, A Mandate for the Nation indicates a 90‰ probability that a poor reader at the end of 1st grade will be a poor reader at the end of the 4th grade.

All parents want the best for their children. Parents that have the knowledge and information to help their children develop these skills ensure their children gain the proficiencies necessary to thrive academically. Unfortunately, not all parents know the importance of reading to young children or have the skills to engage them in the reading process, provide a literacy-rich environment, and choose age-appropriate books.

Promoting Early Literacy

The Library sees a critical need to reach out to parents and care-providers to help them make reading and books an important part of every child's life. By making parents and care-providers aware of the resources available through the Library, the importance of early literacy, and how to integrate books and reading into children's lives, the Library will help ensure local children enter school much better prepared to succeed.

To address this challenge, the Library seeks to expand its early childhood education outreach. Currently the Library offers many programs, including story hours, the Summer Reading Program, November Read-Aloud, and more. While the Library widely markets these programs, they often do not reach those who would benefit the most – non-library users.

The Library conducted research to determine the best avenues to reach the children of non-library users and found daycares to be an ideal place to reach children who were not exposed to books at home. Many children spend time in daycares – there are over 700 daycares in Marion County. Thus the Library began to work closely with daycares, specifically those which serve lower-income families, to help children get the early access to reading they need.

According to Marilyn Jager Adams, author of Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print, the typical middle-class child is read to 1,000 to 1,700 hours before entering first grade, whereas a child from a low-income family is read to an average of just 25 hours. Evidence of this unfortunate trend may be seen locally; consider the earlier statistic about IPS kindergarteners' preparedness for school. With over 80% eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, Indianapolis Public Schools students are among the neediest in the state. Without the early literacy skills necessary for a solid start, these children are at risk of academic difficulties that can affect their entire education.

The Library seeks to expand its Bunny Book Bag program, which serves daycares, in order to reach more children. The Bunny Bag program works to increase children's exposure to picture books, thus helping them gain early literacy skills. Librarians visit these daycares and leave them with Bunny Bags, which contain 20 picture books. Librarians make regular visits and help the daycare staff integrate story hours and literacy building skills into their daily activities. They mentor the daycare staff, provide them with age appropriate book lists, introduce them to the library branch closest to their site, and encourage them to make use of other library materials in their work.

During the first quarter of 2007, branch librarians provided 126 story programs at daycare centers, serving 2,802 children age 5 or younger. Librarians often leave a Bunny Bag for the daycare to keep until the next library visit Another outreach effort that uses Bunny Bags is the Itty Bitty Bookmobile program. The bookmobiles make weekly visits to 58 licensed home daycares in low-income areas. Librarians bring Bunny Bags for the children, and for the daycare providers, craft/activity ideas to help engage the children in stories. To continue relationships with these daycares, librarians send them them quarterly book lists and activity ideas. They also make it easy to visit branches by promoting programs at their nearest branch.

Home daycare leaders can exchange their Bunny Bag for a new one during the next Itty Bitty Bookmobile visit, or by going to their local branch library if they want to get "fresh" materials sooner. When the home daycares "graduate" in May, we encourage them to continue their relationship with IMCPL by enrolling the children in our Summer Reading Program and introducing caregivers to the manager of the nearest branch library (where they can go to continue borrowing Bunny Bags).

Library Card Campaign

Reading to children constitutes a critical element of their development. Once children reach the age when they can read on their own, they need a constant flow of new books. A library card opens many worlds; unfortunately, many households do not have library cards. Many of the families who do not have library cards would benefit from them the most, as they often cannot afford to purchase reading materials and some have limited literacy skills. A child with a library card introduces the entire family to the library, granting them access to information, computers, and books relating to their personal interests.

A study conducted in 2004 ("The Effects of Increased Access to Books on Student Reading Using the Public Library" by Nicole Whitehead) found that "when students had a library card and participated in class trips to the library, they had higher access to print and spent more time reading voluntarily in the home. Likely as a result of increased time spent reading, students had higher test scores in reading comprehension and reading accuracy."

As children progress through school, reading remains a critical tool for learning. Not only must children read to learn about history, literature, and many other subjects, they also need to develop the tools to be lifelong learners. The library seeks to help these children strengthen their literacy skills so they have the ability to read their school subject matter, as well as recreational reading. To address these needs, the Library will initiate a library card outreach campaign in 2008 reaching kindergarten and seventh grade students. These ages were chosen because schools have parent orientation nights for these grade levels, giving the library the opportunity to reach the entire family.

The goals of the library card program will be to:

Provide every child entering these two critical educational years access to a library card.
Raise awareness among school children and their parents of the importance of information accessibility to their success in school.
Promote the public library as an excellent source for their information needs, whether it be on-line journal articles for a school report or books on preparing for college.
Address the literacy needs of all students, particularly those at risk and who come from families with limited literacy abilities, while connecting their families with resources.
Help children learn habits that help them become life-long users of public libraries and of information.

The Library will work closely with local school districts to implement this program. Librarians will pinpoint books that will pique the interest of the target groups – kindergartners and seventh graders. They will then go into the school and make a presentation encouraging the kids to sign-up for cards. Portions of books will be read, but the children will be left with a cliff-hanger. To find out what happens, they will need to get a library card and take the book home and read it themselves (or, for kindergartners, read it with their families).

Librarians will make repeat visits to classrooms to engage them in more books and to share more about the library with them. Children will be told about the library closest to their home and will be encouraged to visit it. For example, the library will host a program of great interest to kids (building upon the books they have been introduced to) and invite them to attend. When children go to the library, attend library programs, and check out books, library staff will welcome them, provide them with encouragement and incentives such as bookmarks or other popular items, and invite them to return.

This program will not only provide every child with a library card, it will also help make these students better lifelong learners by introducing them to the library and how it can help them throughout life. To make this program a reality, the library needs to secure $5 for every child it seeks to reach.