THE KEY TO READING ?

WHAT IS IMPORTANCE OF GAMING FOR CHILDREN FROM LOW-INCOME FAMILIES? Ready to Learn Initiative Funded by the United States Department of Education. It's designed to help improve literacy in students aged 2 to 8 using a variety of media tools and curriculum resources. Current Ready To Learn initiative grantees are PBS in partnership with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Ready To Learn PartnershipPBSCorporation for Public BroadcastingReady To Learn Partnership

Summative Evaluation of the Ready to Learn Initiative Focused on economically disadvantaged school participating in the program in San Francisco and New York. 400 students in 80 preschool classes from 47 different centers. Teacher randomly assigned a 10-week curriculum. Activities ranged from viewing public broadcasting shows to playing Web-based computer games and participating in hands-on activities. Learn Initiative favorites Between the Lions, Sesame Street, SUPER WHY, and WordWorld.Between the LionsSesame StreetSUPER WHYWordWorld

Raising Readers Programming through PBS Between the Lions stars Theo, Cleo, Lionel and Leona - a family of lions - run a magical library where characters pop out of books, vowels sing and words take on a life of their own. The series combines puppetry, animation and live action to help young children learn to read. Between the Lions Sesame Street, the recipient of 85 Emmys, engages children with its unique blend of excitement, humor, and compassion. Sesame Street helps children learn and grow in a constantly changing, continually challenging environment. Sesame Street SUPER WHY! is an animated series for kids 3-6 which introduces a group of super-heroes who help kids learn to read through interactive fairytale adventures! SUPER WHY! Word World is an Emmy Award-winning computer animated pre-school series, where fun-loving “WordFriends™” who are characters first and words second, morph into life when letters are placed together to form a word and go on “WordPlay” adventures! Word World

SUPER WHY

Comparison between those children who participated in the literacy curriculum vs. the comparison group. Letter Naming Increase from 15.8 letter that could be named pre-test to 21.2 on the post- curriculum evaluation. Increase from 13.6 to 16.8 in the comparison group. Letter Sounds Increase from 5.8 to 10 letter sounds known on the post-curriculum evaluation. Increase from 5.9 to 6.3 for the comparison curriculum. Story and Print Concepts Increase from a score of 9.7 to 10.8 for children in the literacy curriculum. Increase from 9.1 to 9.5 for the comparison curriculum. Knowledge for Letters in Name Increase from 2.4 to 2.7 letters known for students under the literacy curriculum. Increase from 2.3 to 2.5 for the comparison curriculum.

Summary Findings The results show that digital media, including public television programming and web-based games, can support early literacy skills when thoughtfully integrated with teacher-led interactive activities.

References Nagel, David. (2009). “Study: Games, Videos Improve Preschooler Literacy. Retrieved from The Journal. Public Broadcasting Service. (Copyright 2010).