Ready to Read Project Will Test Classroom Use of Sesame Street and Between the Lions Programming

JAN. 2, 2008 | The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has awarded $175,000 to the National Center for Rural Early Childhood Learning Initiatives for the Ready to Read Project, a two-year evaluation of the use of Sesame Street and Between the Lions segments in classrooms for rural three- and four-year-olds.

The center, known as Rural Early Childhood, is a program of the Mississippi State University Early Childhood Institute.

Teachers in the Ready to Read Project will incorporate special collections of segments from the two television series into their lesson plans. The center will compare the progress of children who experience the lessons and others who do not. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting awarded the contract as part of its Ready to Learn Initiative.

The Mississippi State University Extension Service will conduct workshops for the participating teachers.

All three- and four-year-old children at participating centers in the Mississippi Delta counties of Bolivar, Sunflower, and Washington Counties and in the city of Pearl, Mississippi, will receive free DVDs of the special collections along with booklets for parents on how to use the DVDs at home. Rural Early Childhood produced the two collections and companion parent education booklets with previous funding from the U.S. Department of Education.

The center also will collaborate with Education Development Center, Inc., to evaluate the effect of use of the collections by rural parents at home.

Following pilot use of the curriculum materials, the center will revise the materials for possible nationwide dissemination by the Ready to Learn Initiative.

Cathy Grace, Ed.D., professor of curriculum and instruction and director of the MSU Early Childhood Institute, designed the Ready to Read Project and a DVD of teacher activities for use in the project. Mississippi Public Broadcasting produced the DVD of teacher activities. Grace and Elizabeth F. Shores, M.A.P.H., wrote guides for teachers and teacher trainers in the project. Stacy Callender, M.A., will coordinate the project.

The center has conducted several studies of early learning and the early childhood services sector in rural America. Its 2006 analysis of data in the federal Early Childhood Longitudinal Study found that rural children arrive at kindergarten 60 percent more likely than non-rural children to need special education.

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