America Reads in Head Start Classrooms: Partners in Literacy

Abstract

In a partnership linking university faculty and students with Head Start programs, 50 student interns trained in early literacy development worked with over 500 children in 25 Head Start classrooms. Student interns spent 8-10 hours weekly planning and conducting literacy activities which emphasized written language forms, books and stories, and phonemic awareness. The results of the intervention for participating children were evaluated for knowledge of environmental print, letter names and letter sounds, phonological awareness, and emergent writing at two points during the intervention (after 14 weeks and again after 26 weeks, on average). Children in the intervention classrooms demonstrated statistically significant differences on all measures when compared with a sample of Head Start children who did not have a student intern in the classroom and who were evaluated at 20 weeks. Teacher surveys rejected many beneficial effects in the classrooms, children, and teachers themselves. For Head Start programs, this intervention provides a positive model for enhancing children's literacy knowledge, as well as a blueprint for successful partnerships with university faculty and students.