BLAST Early Learning

Research Points

Early learning has been studied for many, many years. Listed are some of the important findings that we should all remember.

• Roughly 35% of children in the United States enter school without the skills necessary for learning to read.

  (Carnegie Foundation of New York. Starting Points: Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children. Waldorf, MD: Carnegie Corp of NY, 1994.)

• Children learn by doing. They learn best when they are actively engaged in an activity, and this includes the sharing and reading of books.

  (Ghoting, Saroj Nadkarni. Early Literacy Storytimes @ your library : Partnering with Caregivers for Success / Saroj Nadkarni Ghoting and Pamela Martin-Díaz. Chicago : American Library Association, 2006.)

• It is much easier for children to read a word when they are familiar with it. Take advantage of every opportunity to introduce children to new words and new contexts for the words they already know. This is one way we help them to develop vocabulary.

  (Ghoting, Saroj Nadkarni. Early Literacy Storytimes @ your library: Partnering with Caregivers for Success / Saroj Nadkarni Ghoting and Pamela Martin-Díaz. Chicago : American Library Association, 2006)

• Connecting writing to crafts strengthens the connection between the written and spoken word. It can help children understand that their words have meaning and can be written down for others to read.

  (Ghoting, Saroj Nadkarni. Early Literacy Storytimes @ your library : Partnering with Caregivers for Success / Saroj Nadkarni Ghoting and Pamela Martin-Díaz. Chicago : American Library Association, 2006)

• Use early literacy strategies to help create storytimes that are meaningful to children with all kinds of learning styles.

  (Ghoting, Saroj Nadkarni. Early Literacy Storytimes @ your library : Partnering with Caregivers for Success / Saroj Nadkarni Ghoting and Pamela Martin-Díaz. Chicago : American Library Association, 2006.)

• Research shows that children with larger vocabularies have higher school achievement.

  (Duke, Neil and Annie Moses. 10 Research-Tested Ways to Build Children’s Vocabulary, Scholastic Professional Paper. Scholastic, 2003.)

• One out of five school children is reading-impaired by the time he reaches 4th grade. 38% of our nation’s fourth-grade children are reading below a basic level of proficiency.

  (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. National Assessment of Educational Progress. The Nation’s Report Card: Reading Highlights. 2003)

• Most children who have difficulty in reading have trouble in phonological awareness.

  (Connie Juel. Learning to Read and Write: A Longitudinal Study of 54 Children from First through Fourth Grades. Journal of Educational Psychology (1988) v.80 no.4, p.437-447)