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.
LENA - Building brains through early talk
Webinars (7)
Learning Together: Increasing staff and family commitment to early literacy at Phoenix Public Library
Libraries, early literacy, and LENA go hand-in-hand. In this webinar, Phoenix Public Library talks about its LENA Start implementation, including funding sources, community partnerships, staff development, parent reactions, and effectiveness.
Supporting young children and families during COVID: Launching new programs and adapting to virtual family engagement
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?
LENA for Libraries
Learn more about how libraries can incorporate LENA programs into their offerings for patrons. How have our current library partners achieved positive results?
Integrating LENA Home into Early Head Start Programs
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.
Family Resiliency and Early Language: Leveraging a Public Health Lens With Interactive-Talk Initiatives to Improve Child Outcomes
In this webinar, medical practitioners help us understand early language development through a public health lens. How does interactive talk build family resiliency?
Implementing a new community program: What we’ve learned in the first five years of LENA Start
Learn more about LENA Start, an evidence-based community program designed to engage families and help them learn how to increase conversation with their children during the first few years of life.
Blog Posts (24)
LENA Start coordinator and graduate featured in reading documentary
A new documentary film from director Jenny Mackenzie and executive producer LeVar Burton features a LENA Start coordinator and her family.
Early literacy and early talk: Webinar highlights featuring author Maya Smart
In a recent webinar, author Maya Payne Smart shared her vision for our “collective power to raise our readers well.”
Providence Talks Replication: Building city-wide impact one family at a time in Hartford
Entering its fourth year, Hartford Talks is focusing on families. Here are two families’ LENA stories.
“1, 2, 3 Talk with Me”: One mother’s story of completing Virtual LENA Start
Working from home while caring for a baby is an all-too-familiar juggling act these days. A mom in Phoenix tells her story of how LENA Start helped.
Parent recruitment for LENA Start and LENA Home: Recognizing and responding to barriers
A recent Community Conversation among our partners inspired these new ideas about recruiting families for programs like Start and Home.
Reflective feedback in parenting interventions: Coming back to the “Why”
Programs like LENA Start and LENA Home can help parents reflect on their hopes and dreams and follow through on their goals.
Three moms share stories of their LENA Start experience
Survey results tell us that families’ enthusiasm for LENA Start has held steady more than a year into the pandemic. Three personal family stories show us why.
“An eye-opening experience”: Survey shows overwhelming positivity for LENA Grow among teachers and coaches
According to survey data, 99% of teachers would recommend LENA Grow to other teachers, and 93% of coaches say the program has had a positive impact on their relationships with teachers.
Celebrating AAPI Heritage: Building community and connecting to culture in Hawaiʻi
In recognition of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we’re highlighting two LENA Start programs in Hawaiʻi that are doing amazing work around cultural responsiveness.
Engaging families in LENA Grow
Family engagement is one of the most important parts of any child care professional’s job. We’ve created a Family Engagement Toolkit to help our LENA Grow partners.
Inside Early Talk: Our point of greatest leverage for improving children’s futures
LENA has collected and analyzed its most expansive data set to date through the 10,000 children annually impacted by our programs for families and early childhood teachers.
Reflections honoring Black History Month
Two of our partners share their thoughts on the importance of Black History Month and how they integrate their personal beliefs into their professional work.
Parents on virtual LENA Start classes: “Now I know 10 families when I drop my kids off at school.”
The virtual format offered families a powerful opportunity to connect when they otherwise couldn’t during the pandemic.
Five best practices for parent recruitment and retention (virtually or in person)
Explore key learnings on how community programs can recruit and retain families.
Celebrate Good Times, Come On: Virtual Ways to Acknowledge Your Families, Teachers, and Teams
It can be easy to plug away at tasks and deadlines without taking time to pause and acknowledge accomplishments. Celebrating the small and big wins within your program is crucial to the health of your community.
Virginia Beach adapts to virtual programming to boost child outcomes, reduce caregiver stress
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, the team in Virginia Beach knew that they couldn’t afford to wait to transition to virtual programming for families and teachers.
Virtual retention: Strategies for keeping families engaged in a community program
There are intentional methods you can integrate within your virtual communication to cultivate a space that welcomes vulnerability, trust, and collaborative participation.
Case study: Why three organizations pivoted to offer virtual LENA Start classes
When the pandemic hit, community organizations found their regular programming for families abruptly cut off. Learn why three pivoted to virtual.
Early Head Start centers in Tennessee use LENA programs to improve early literacy
Porter-Leath uses LENA programs to boost early literacy and connect teachers and families.
Study from University of Minnesota finds LENA Start fits well into community infrastructure
A new study on LENA Start from the University of Minnesota discovered that the program can be successfully implemented in community-based settings and that families enjoy participating.
Virtual LENA Start classes help parents and teachers to connect and collaborate
At Best Memories Academy in Orlando, parents and teachers are partnering together virtually to create rich early childhood language environments for children.
Results from parent survey confirm LENA Start is building stronger families
We analyzed data from 1,700 program participants and found that families report spending more time with children, talking more, and feeling more confident in their parenting abilities.
Q&A with Dr. Reem Khamis-Dakwar: Empowering families to reclaim minority languages with LENA Start
In New York City, LENA Start classes empowered Spanish- and Arabic-speaking families to value their native languages and maintain them across generations.
Q&A with Emma Quigan: How COMET Auckland is using LENA with indigenous families in New Zealand
In New Zealand, LENA is a tool to empower whānau (families) to connect to culture and each other.
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Articles (2)
Podcast: Racing to get kids reading
People Fixing the World: How a race to write books and a gadget that counts words are helping child literacy.
Mesquite ISD offering free classes for parents of young kids to help promote verbal development
Outside Dallas, Texas, Mesquite Independent School District is gearing up for LENA Start through its Read, Play, Talk initiative.