virginia mann founder and director professor of cognitive sciences, univ. of calif., irvine habla: ...
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Virginia Mann Founder and Director
Professor of Cognitive Sciences, Univ. of Calif., Irvine
HABLA: http://www.socsci.uci.edu/habla/Email: [email protected]
Home-based Activities Building Language
Acquisition
The 2000 census targets Santa Ana:
Highest drop-out rate
Largest proportion of Spanish speakers
Some consequences of not finishing school:
Less income: 37 cents for every dollar earned by someone with a diploma
A shorter life: dying on average, 9 years earlier than graduates
Only a 1% decrease in the dropout rate, nationwide could:
lead to 100,000 fewer crimes (including 400 fewer murders) a savings of $1.4 million annually
LA Times 1/29/06
What can be Done?
Improve the schoolsHigh school matriculation relates to
Class sizeTeacher education
Improve the pipeline!Work with younger childrenWork before kindergarten starts
Even Start, State preschool programs and HABLA
Poverty and children’s language environment
A key study by Hart and Risely: Meaningful Differences (1995)
42 children studied in their homes Language of parent(s) to child sampled
monthly between 1 and 3 yrs
Children from welfare families compared to those from upper class professional families, and working class families
Oral Language to Young Children (Hart and Risley 1995)
ParentalIncome
language
Upper middle class
Working class
Welfare
Words per hour
2153 1251 611
Affirmativewords
32 12 7
Negativewords
5 7 11
A culture of silence
A culture of negative words: SHHHHHHH!!!!
Poverty associates with weak language environment Welfare parents use fewer words per hour Each year, this means a child:
in a professional family hears 11 million words in a welfare family would hear just 3 million
By age 5 welfare children have heard 32 million fewer words
The are language impoverished
The Dire Facts
For the child, this leads to:
Weak vocabularies
5,000 word vocabularies instead of 20,000
By age 3:
the spoken vocabularies of the children from the professional families
were larger than those used by the parents in the welfare families.
For the child--
Weak speaking and listening skills
Weak cognitive skills
Early math development depends upon language input
Foundations for science and other academic subjects also depend upon language as a medium of input
HABLA Research: A bottleneck in the pipeline Disadvantaged children in Santa Ana begin with slightly lower language skills but soon fall far behind – even in Spanish!
Age at baseline measure
> 42 mo.31 - 42 mo< 30 mo.
Mea
n A
ge-a
djus
ted
Sta
ndar
d P
LS S
core
.
100
90
80
70
At risk
Normal
A Cautionary Note
The danger of ‘greenhouse effects’Makes early intervention a mandate!
Other consequences can spread beyond language
Weak social skills communicating and negotiating conflict resolution
Low esteem Lack of positive regard associates with
personality deviance Lack of a need for achievement
parents have low aspirations and pass on a sense of hopelessness
What can be done?
How to correct the deficit? When to start? What to do? Where to do it? What language to use?
1. Exercise Spoken Language
Encourage Language Use in:Production -- speaking
Comprehension -- listening
Complex vocabulary, rich grammar, not baby talk
2. Enrich the Literacy Environment
Use children’s books and share reading activities to expose children to:
Complex Vocabulary Stories SongsNursery Rhymes
Engage in dialogic reading i.e. having a two-way conversation around a book
3. Develop ‘Phonological
Awareness’Readers do more than speak a languagethey appreciate the sounds within words as something separate from meaningWhat is a ‘long word’? snake or caterpillar
What two words start with the same sound? cat, dog, cup
Realizing that letters stand for phonemes is an important part of what reading the English alphabet is all aboutUsing letters to write morphemes is also very critical but plays more of a role for children beyond grade 3
Examples of phonological awareness activities:
Word play that involves comparing identifying, and manipulating ‘sounds’ within words
Nursery rhymes and poems (these compare and manipulate rhyming words and words that start with the same sounds)
Word games (E.g. ‘Willowby-wallaby’; these often manipulate phonemes)
Learning letter names and sounds (these identify phonemes)
Make it age appropriate! Make it age appropriate! Mastering Phonological Awareness takes Mastering Phonological Awareness takes timetime
How to achieve these three strategies ?
Two new programs at UCI:
Home-based Activities Building Language Acquisition
School-based mentoring for language enrichment
HABLA’s Answer:Replicating some practices of the “Parent-Child
Home Program” :
Provide two years of home visits, twice per week for a total of 46 weeks
Increase verbal interaction between parents and their 2-4 year old children
Use easily learned, fun methods
Give books and toys that stay in the home
The PCHP Philosophy:
Help parents realize their role as children’s first and most important teachers
Coach parents to provide positive reinforcement, using developmentally appropriate materials that will engender higher self esteem
HABLA’s 3 innovations to PCHP:
Use SPANISH, the language of the home, and
supply high quality materials in that language
Use culturally appropriate mentors as
coaches and role models to the family
Include activities to boost cognitive
development (math, science) while language
is being remediated
HABLA as Cost Effective:
1 year of HABLA: $20001 year of preschool: $6000An extra year of school: $6000Each year of Special Education: $12,000
Cumulative loss of social capital: PRICELESS
Less income tax, increased health and welfare costs, lost potential
The Home Visitors
Culturally competent Community paraprofessionals UCI students AmeriCorps members
Native speakers of Spanish Trained prior to visits and during service, and
supervised by Site Coordinators: Maricela Sandova Lorena Garcia, and David
Calderon
An HABLA mom who is now a home visitor….
The Clientele
Two-year olds whose parents are: Educationally disadvantaged Financially disadvantaged
Primary caretaker must participate, by being present and involved in every session
Visit 1: parent observes use of book/toy Visit 2: uses book/toy with child and receives further
coaching
One of our Families
Another of our Families
Home Visits
The Toys and Books Developmentally appropriate Colorful and fun Promote both listening and
speaking and hands on activities In the Language of the home With tip sheets in Spanish that are
left for the parents
Some Examples Books:
Where’s Spot Is Your Mama a Lama Our ‘HABLA Rimas’ book of familiar
Spanish nursery songs and rhymes and their English translations
Toys ‘Moody Bear’ puzzle Shape and color sorter
Measuring the Outcome:
Spanish language assessment at program intake and at the end of each year
“The Preschool Language Scale”:
A scaled, age-adjusted measure of receptive and productive language
Available in Spanish or English
Positive Gains for the Children: A “Promising Practice”
Age at baseline measure
> 42 mo.31 - 42 mo< 30 mo.
Me
an
Ag
e-a
dju
ste
d S
tan
da
rd P
LS
Sc
ore
.
100
90
80
70
Without HABLA
HABLA Treated Children, 2001-2005: Spanish Language Ability
70
75
80
85
90
95
100
Intake 1 Year 2 Years524 478 254
PL
S-3
Sta
nd
ard
ize
d S
co
re
New data: HABLA graduates attending Warwick Preschool 2002-2007
Descriptive Statistics
53 20 44 32.72 6.052
53 59 129 90.70 13.588
61 28 59 40.34 7.076
61 71 150 99.10 18.192
50 38 65 49.86 6.334
49 67 150 102.35 16.766
63 1 16 9.10 2.757
63 2 18 8.75 3.126
55 7200 36000 20011.27 6405.088
35
age
total std
age 1
t std1
age 2
t std2
mom ed
dad ed
fam income
Valid N (listwise)
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
PLS Results for Warwick cohort during their HABLA treatment
Basic Skills in Preschool:Letter KnowledgeHABLA
Spanish English
Basic Skills in Preschool:Mathematics HABLA
Spanish English
Basic Skills in Preschool:Colors and Shapes HABLA
Spanish English
More outcome assessment: Kindergarten at Kennedy Elementary
Parent survey of home literacy activities
The Preschool language scale Spanish at onset of school year
Phonological awareness English at end of year
Parent SurveyHABLA (n=15)
MEAN SDControl (n=20)
MEAN SD
Mother’s Education 8.9 3.8 6.7 3.9Father’s Education 8.0 3.55 7.4 4.77Reading onset (months) 26 13.5 26 15.7Read at bedtime 4.0 2.9 1.0 2.23Read other time 5.6 1.11 1.8 2.2Ask to read 4.8 .41 2.7 1.55Children’s books (number) 5.0 .96 3.0 2.35Teach print 4.6 .51 3.2 1.39Teach read 4.6 .73 2.6 1.42
Spanish PLS-III Total Spanish PLS-III Total Language ScoreLanguage Score
92.7
101.72
88
90
92
94
96
98
100
102
Age
-adj
uste
d st
anda
rd sco
re
Control HABLA
English Phoneme Judgment
51.8%
76.3%
40.8%
64.2%
0.0%
10.0%
20.0%
30.0%
40.0%
50.0%
60.0%
70.0%
80.0%
Per
cent
cor
rect
Initial Final
Control
HABLA
English Phoneme Substitution
0.63
1.47
0.41
1.26
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
Mea
n Cor
rect
Initial Final
Control
HABLA
Review and Conclusions:Some dire observations
Poverty weak language environments
Weak language environment weak language and cognition
Thus poor children enter school
at a disadvantage
For ESL children: this is a double whammy
weak primary language limits secondary language development as well as cognitive growth
But home visitation offers some promising results
Home environments can improve Parents can be coached to provide
more language and literacy stimulation
This may take a time and effort But produces a real and lasting
advantage for school success
Parents speaking and reading with their
children, children who enter school ready to
learn