LENA - Building brains through early talk
In this webinar, LENA’s researchers will expand on their findings about inequities in child care and preschool settings with a new dataset. These findings will act as a springboard to a solutions-based discussion, inviting perspectives from experts on supporting multi-language learners in early childhood.
It’s no easy task for early childhood leaders to strategically disburse funds from PDG B-5, CCDBG, CLSD, and ARPA grants into the hands of LEAs and CCR&Rs. In fact, the alphabet soup of early childhood education funding streams can be a bit hard to digest, so to speak. In this webinar, state leaders will tell the stories of how and why they invested in initiatives for statewide implementation, as well as their visions for further expansion and impact.
What role may a child’s earliest interactions play in laying the foundation for learning to read? In this webinar, we take an expert deep dive into how conversational turns from ages birth to five fit into the ongoing discussions around the “science of reading.”
It’s more important than ever to equip early childhood educators to address children’s unique needs and help get their language and social-emotional development on track. There’s strong new evidence to suggest that LENA Grow, a language-focused professional development program for early educators, is effective at doing just that.
What are the most effective, accessible, achievable ways to nurture infant and early childhood mental health/social and emotional well-being in young children? As anyone who has ever cared for a young child or talked to a stressed-out early educator or struggling parent well knows, this is a question that deserves all the attention it can get.
The Director of Early Childhood Programs and an instructional coach from Pasco County Schools, Fla., describe the why and the how of their LENA journey, touching on topics such as family engagement, CLASS scores, funding, and teacher job satisfaction.
Learn how LENA technology supports positive outcomes for social-emotional, language, and cognitive development, delivering equity-minded insights into how children experience interactions on an individual level. Hosted by Smart Start.
In this webinar, we’ll outline the mismatch between science and practice around multilingualism. How do we push aside myths about barriers and deficits to arrive at a place where one child’s multilingualism is considered an asset for all?
Two independent program evaluations of LENA Grow show links between the professional development program and positive outcomes for early childhood educators and the children in their care.
Mesquite Independent School District, serving around 40,000 students in the suburbs of Dallas, has developed a successful early literacy initiative powered by city-wide dedication to a unified vision: School readiness and early literacy are vital for long-term success, and they start at birth.
In 2019, five U.S. cities were selected to receive a three-year grant to replicate the widely celebrated Providence Talks early literacy program. As the grant period draws to a close, we’re sharing their stories of what worked.
In her book Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six, Maya Smart uses the analogy of a road trip to describe the “road to reading” for parents of young children. Early talk can jumpstart the journey.
Hear the individual stories of how LENA Grow has made a difference at every level of the early childhood education system, and learn about the big picture of LENA’s vision for LENA Grow as it reaches more and more communities.
Babies born during the COVID-19 pandemic are vocalizing less and experiencing less interactive talk with adults than their pre-pandemic peers, suggesting they may be at greater risk of experiencing language delays.
In Texas, the most recent review of the early childhood QRIS called for a greater emphasis to be placed on caregiver-child interactions. How is Workforce Solutions for North Central Texas using LENA Grow to help child care providers increase quality adult-child interactions?
Many previous studies have drawn connections between the quantity of back-and-forth interactions in early childhood and later linguistic and cognitive skills. Importantly, newly published research conducted in Chile has taken a novel direction, determining that infants’ language environments predict their socioemotional skills one year later.
There’s a wide variability of interactions across child care settings. What makes an interaction a quality interaction, and how do we reduce teacher stress while supporting their drive for quality interactions?
We hear from an organization that has recently launched a new LENA Start program and another that has shifted their existing program from in-person to virtual. What are their go-to strategies for effective family engagement in a virtual context?
In September 2020, the Office of Head Start released over $1 billion in Head Start funding competitions. How do you develop a vision and strategy for writing a compelling Head Start application?
How can we leverage funding opportunities to integrate a trauma-informed approach to accelerating language and literacy skills?
Black Family Development, based in Detroit, implements programming to improve outcomes for children and communities. Learn how they do this through a racial equity lens.
We talk with program implementers in both the United States and New Zealand who are building culturally and linguistically responsive programming. Learn how they’re succeeding.
COVID-19 recommendations have changed the way child care providers are able to interact with children and support their early academic and social development. How can we continue to adapt while creating a positive learning environment?
New neuroscience research shows us that the first five years of a child’s life are the most critical period for brain development. What are school districts doing to give all children an equitable start?
Learn how Early Head Start programs can integrate LENA into their supports for families. LENA Home, which embraces a trauma-informed approach, helps home visitors individualize their coaching and meet families where they are.
What does equity look like in early childhood classrooms? Learn concrete strategies for supporting coaches, teachers, and administrators in fostering more equitable classroom environments.
Explore research-based strategies for helping children overcome adversity.
A pilot of LENA Grow in nine classrooms in Kansas found that teachers responded well to the program’s data-based coaching and children demonstrated better language skills after participating.
A new clinical trial will use LENA SP to evaluate the effectiveness of a speech-language intervention for infants with a known genetic risk factor for speech and language delays.
Best friends Kathryn Royse and Samantha Stover enrolled in LENA Start classes in Houston together and began looking for ways to increase conversation at home.
Through a collective impact model, the University of Memphis is implementing LENA programs to build stronger families, increase teachers’ skills, and support students’ learning in their local community.
Families who participated in LENA Start provided increasingly rich home language environments for their children, expanding how much they talked to and with them over the duration of the three-month class, compared to families who did not attend, a new study has found.
Three new studies provide insight into how children learn during the first months and years of life.
Family engagement specialist Kai-ama Hamer shares strategies for involving parents in community and school-based programs.
This year, we explored many different aspects of early brain development through special webinars, blog posts, and conversations with experts. Here, we’ve highlighted four themes that emerged during 2019.
We’re answering questions submitted during our webinar about how to create equitable and inclusive classroom experiences for children with Dr. Iheoma Iruka of HighScope, Ellen Roche of Trust for Learning, and Lauren Cooper from LENA.
A peer coach shares how she incentivizes teachers during the LENA Grow program.
We’re answering questions submitted during last week’s webinar about early childhood innovation at the municipal level.
To help families and home visitors collaborate to improve language outcomes for children, many Early Head Start programs are using LENA technology in tandem with coaching during home visits.
We’ve interviewed LENA Grow participants nationwide for an inside look at what it’s like to complete the professional development program for early childhood teachers.
Taking LENA Start classes helped the Ochoa family learn to connect with their children in new ways.
Five cities have been selected to replicate Providence Talks — one of the first early language initiatives implemented at the municipal level — with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
At LENA, we believe that adult caregivers have the power to make a difference in a child’s life. Helping parents – and early childhood teachers – use that power to boost vocabulary and literacy is a good thing.
A new study exploring associations between family socioeconomic background, children’s brain structure, and children’s reading skills indicates that children who experience more conversational turns may have increased brain growth, and in turn, better reading skills.
Promising new data show that children whose families participated in LENA Start, a parent-group program focused on increasing early talk, demonstrated considerably higher early literacy scores and were far more likely to be at an advanced literacy level entering pre-K.
Sequatchie Valley Head Start uses LENA Grow to meet federal coaching requirements and work with teachers geographically separated over five counties.
The team at the West Central Health District drew on a range of existing community partners to find space to run classes, recruit parents, and scale impact.
Classrooms that used LENA Grow, an experiential professional development program for early childhood teachers, increased scores in key CLASS domains compared to classrooms that did not use the program, a pre-post evaluation shows.
Learn how different scientists are using LENA technology to better understand how children learn and develop and in what type of environment they thrive.
Read summaries of three newly-published studies exploring how young children develop and acquire language.
