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.
LENA - Building brains through early talk
Webinars (1)
Blog Posts (24)
Lakeshore® partnership offers materials to help early educators increase quality interactions in the classroom
Developed in partnership with Lakeshore®, four kits are available to provide age-appropriate materials that align with the topics teachers explore during LENA Grow’s five-week coaching sequences and beyond.
LENA Grow goes statewide in Tennessee
“The TN CCR&R sees the LENA Grow program as an important piece of the puzzle in proper language and socio-emotional development for children in Tennessee,” said Heather Hicks, Director of the TN CCR&R.
Evidence-based professional development for early childhood educators: Webinar highlights
Two independent program evaluations of LENA Grow have established the program as evidence-based professional development. See the highlights from the webinar here.
Changing the conversation: How we’re thinking about building impact in early childhood
By year’s end, LENA technology will have measured 20 million conversational turns on 90,000 LENA Days. But that’s only part of the story, and it’s where we go from there that we’re focusing on now.
Sounding the alarm about young children’s language development: A look back at our most viewed content of 2022
A look back at some of the blog posts and webinars that attracted the most eyes and ears in 2022.
Improving early childhood through locally focused philanthropic partnerships
When it comes to accelerating the growth of LENA programs, place-based philanthropic support is critical.
Announcing new enhancements to LENA Grow: Easy, inclusive, equitable
LENA Grow is designed to make every interaction count in early childhood education. The new enhancements make it easy, inclusive, and equitable.
COVID-era infants vocalize less and experience fewer conversational turns, says LENA research team
COVID-era babies may be at greater risk of experiencing language delays.
Some of our favorite books for the 0-5 year olds in your life!
An assortment of the LENA Team’s favorite books, in honor of National Reading Month.
Reflections on 2021: Data that motivate, stories that inspire
Last year around this time, we wrote that “2020 wasn’t the year we planned for.” Has 2021 been any different? Has it been any more normal? Well, yes and no.
LENA Grow updates are coming…So who’s behind the curtain?!
These 12 LENA Grow advisors are helping to implement big improvements to the program.
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.
New data reveals virtual LENA Start classes offer same benefits to families as in-person classes
The virtual participants showed similar gains to pre-pandemic, in-person groups, with lower-talk families increasing conversational turns with their children by 12 percentile points and adult words by 35 percentile points.
Launch Fund Grant Recipients 2020 Pt 2. – Welcome to our new partners!
Through our philanthropic partnerships, LENA awarded more than $525,000 in launch grants in 2020. We’d love to introduce you to our newest partners!
Year in review: Looking back at progress in the midst of a pandemic
2020 wasn’t the year we planned for. Yet, we’ve adapted, and the pivots have had impressive outcomes.
Launch Fund Grant Recipients 2020 – Welcome to our new partners!
In the month of June, we made awards to 12 communities to launch LENA programs. We are pleased to introduce you to our newest LENA partners!
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.
New meta-analysis confirms that LENA’s automated measures significantly predict child language outcomes
Researchers found a correlation between three of LENA’s measures – adult word count, conversational turns, and child vocalizations — and children’s language and cognitive skills.
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.
Now is the time to support child care providers in building positive interactions
It’s time we acknowledge that early childhood teachers are brain architects.
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.
Study finds that families who participate in LENA Start increased adult words, conversational turns, and child vocalizations
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.
Understanding how to support early brain development: Four themes that emerged in 2019
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.
Making a difference: We reached our goal to impact 10,000 children in 2019!
Because of our work, more than 10,000 children experienced 14 million brain-building conversational turns this year.
Articles (1)
Overdeck Family Foundation awards LENA $4,605,000 in general operating support
A three-year grant of $4,605,000 in general operating support to LENA to further their work at using coaching to improve the key outcome of early language development.