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 (18)
Family child care provider used LENA Grow to connect with parents, children
For Pamela Robinson, a family child care provider in Georgia, using LENA Grow was an opportunity to show parents all the brain-building interaction that happens during the day in her home as she watches children.
What’s new in LENA Start 3.0
We’re excited to share that we’ve released a new version of our group program for parents and families.
Q&A with Dr. Jim Duggan: Why school districts should prioritize early childhood
Your questions on school readiness answered by the assistant superintendent of Bourbonnais 53 school district in Illinois.
Resources to help support your family and community during COVID-19
Amidst mounting pressures, we believe the core truths of LENA still apply: early talk is key, and caregivers are the secret sauce.
Q&A with Kai-ama Hamer: A discussion of family engagement and parent recruitment
Family engagement specialist Kai-ama Hamer shares strategies for involving parents in community and school-based programs.
Early Head Start programs use LENA Home to improve language and literacy outcomes
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.
Teachers and coaches share their experiences with LENA Grow
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.
Virginia Beach family increases two-generation, bilingual engagement with children through LENA Start
Taking LENA Start classes helped the Ochoa family learn to connect with their children in new ways.
Four strategies one nonprofit uses to boost literacy citywide
Calgary Reads, a nonprofit in Alberta, Canada, uses LENA Start as a core component of their citywide strategy to boost early literacy in Calgary.
Wisconsin health care company offers parenting classes as employee benefit
In a state where 77 percent of employers report having trouble finding employees, North Central Health Care is looking for an answer in an unexpected place: early childhood.
Clarke uses LENA technology to bridge home and school environments
Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech, a listening and spoken language program for children who are deaf or hard of hearing, has recently incorporated LENA technology as a “standard of care” for all children enrolled in their early intervention program.
LENA Programming Aligns with Head Start’s Parent, Family, and Community Engagement (PFCE) Framework
Learn more about how LENA’s programs support key aspects of Head Start’s updated Parent, Family, and Community Engagement (PFCE) Framework.
10 Tips for Family Engagement
We’ve pulled together 10 strategies for connecting with families in your local community.
Frameworks for understanding effective family engagement
Working with families and communities is at the heart of what we do at LENA. This post provides an overview of well-established definitions of family engagement that inform our programs.
Parents gain confidence, skills, and awareness through LENA Start classes
A young couple from Texas share how LENA Start classes helped them gain confidence in their parenting skills after the birth of the first daughter.
Atlanta Speech School uses LENA for families of hard of hearing children
Staff from the Atlanta Speech School share how they use LENA feedback in coaching sessions with families to help increase their awareness and understanding of the audio environment in their home.
Parent Recruitment 101: A Q&A with Jennifer Calderon
A Recruitment Specialist shares her strategies for recruiting parents and families to participate in early childhood intervention programs.
LENA Start partners with school-readiness texting program to add continued support for parents after graduation
Parents who graduate from LENA Start will be enrolled in Ready4K, an evidence-based program which sends texts to parents with suggestions on how to increase interaction with children.
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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.