"To enlist parents in their
children's education, schools are increasingly sending text messages home.
There's evidence to suggest parents appreciate the trend.
But can such an approach
actually help young children develop concrete literacy skills, such as building
vocabulary?
A new project out of Temple
University in Philadelphia, dubbed Text to Talk, is showing promising early
results.
Funded by the William Penn
Foundation and tested in 49 pre-K classrooms along with the School District of
Philadelphia, Text to Talk relies on carefully crafted messages with tips for
parents on talking about the new words their children are learning in school.
The messages are send straight to family members' mobile phones using popular
services such as Remind and ClassDojo. The idea is to give children the
opportunity to learn about and practice specific new words in a variety of
settings, with a mix of trusted adults.
Preliminary results from a
small randomized-control trial found that children whose families received the
messages learned more of the vocabulary words (the findings have yet to be peer
reviewed.)
The project isn't the only
such effort happening in K-12. A recent working paper by the National Bureau of
Economic Research, for example, looked at the details of an effort in Dallas,
where parents of pre-kindergarteners received text messages with tips and facts
about supporting their children's learning. And many schools are now using
texts as ways to communicate schedules and other logistical information to
parents.
But in an interview, the
Temple researchers—education professor Barbara A. Wasik and research scientist
Emily K. Snell—said Text to Talk stands out because it's directly tied to the
literacy materials that children are seeing in their early childhood
classrooms.
"I think the most
important part is connecting it to the curriculum," Wasik said.
"There's much more to crafting these messages than just saying, 'OK,
here's 'cat.'"
Following is a transcript of
our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
What's the problem you're
trying to solve?
Wasik: Text to Talk came out
of a bigger issue we're looking at: vocabulary development in young children.
One of the things we think is important is that not only should teachers be
emphasizing vocabulary in the classroom, but we should also be making
connections with the vocabulary children use at home.
Why does
building vocabulary in young children matter?
Wasik: There's been an
enormous amount of research suggesting early vocabulary development is
predictive of kids' readiness to read.
Snell: There are also studies
that show that children's language skills predict other facets of learning in
the classroom, including math, their ability to understand the social science
and science curricula, and even their social-emotional learning and classroom
behavior.
And why does
the home-school connection matter?
Wasik: Kids don't learn just
by hearing words once or twice during the day. It's multiple meaningful
exposures to words that helps them develop vocabulary. Our hypothesis is that
if there's an opportunity both in school and at home to hear a word and get
explanations of what that word means, it will reinforce the learning of that
word.
Snell: It's about giving
children the chance to practice using words in different settings, with
different caring adults.
Why text
messages, rather than email or paper?
Snell: Especially in pre-K,
teachers use a lot of paper, and they have a lot of personal communication with
parents, usually at pickup or drop-off. But we were interested in seeing
whether there was a more efficient way of reaching parents, especially those
who maybe aren't coming to school everyday. And texting has been used in other
settings, like public health, to reach more folks with more personalized
messages. We did focus groups to see if that would be of interest to pre-K
teachers, administrators, and parents, and we found that they were quite open
to it.
What do the
text messages, and the communications they are intended to spur, look like in
practice?
Snell: Pre-K teachers in
Philadelphia use what's called the Creative Curriculum, and there are
particular books they are asked to read to their students. We ask teachers
on a weekly basis to send out two texts that are related to one of the books
they are reading that week. One text just introduces the word, then provides a
link to a website where we have more information, including child-friendly
definitions and activities they can do with their child. The other text has
additional ideas of activities they can do.
What's the
role of apps like Remind and Class Dojo?
Snell: We found that teachers
were already sending text messages, using their own personal phones. But when
we designed this study, we didn't want to ask teachers to do that. In the last
five years, though, there've been some wonderful free text messaging systems
that send messages straight to parents' phones.
Did Text to
Talk help children learn vocabulary?
Snell: In our randomized
control trial, we found that children whose parents had received the text
messages did learn more of the curriculum-aligned vocabulary words, compared to
children whose families didn't receive the text messages. The effect size was
about .16, which is considered small to moderate. We were pleased with that,
given the fairly small amount of effort it takes for teachers to send out the
messages.
Wasik: Other vocabulary
intervention programs that have required more effort and resources have gotten
less significant effects. Our question was, 'Can we do something that's cost
effective, that doesn't require a whole lot of teacher time but can still have
an impact?' That's where we think Text to Talk may fit in.
Is this
concept something that an enterprising ed-tech entrepreneur could try to bring
to market?
Wasik: I think the most
important part is connecting it to the curriculum. There's much more to
crafting these messages than just saying, 'OK, here's 'cat.'" Emily spent
an inordinate amount of time crafting these texts.
Snell: We tried to base the texts
around what we know around the research in early-childhood language
development. We invited parents to talk to children about what the word
is, and we tried to craft texts around principles of how kids learn language.
We also looked at the literature around family involvement, and how parents'
participation is often shaped by how effective they feel helping their
children, and whether they think it's easy and fits into life, and how
appealing they find the invitation. So, we really tried to make the texts
friendly and encouraging, with definitions that parents can use that would be
easy for children to understand. We always tried to make the texts very
encouraging and supportive of parents' own efforts.
There are
always implementation challenges with efforts like this. What surprised you?
Wasik: Initially, we were
naive enough to think teachers were going to construct the texts themselves. We
realized early on that was not going to happen. One of the things that makes
this partially appealing to teachers is that it doesn't take a lot of effort on
their part. They're busy.
Snell: Another thing that was
interesting was that there were many families where multiple family members
were getting the texts. That is almost impossible to do with papers coming home
in backpack]. Helping everyone be on the same page was really appreciated by
families.
Based on
what you've learned, what advice would you give to other early childhood
providers?
Wasik: Find out what your
audience needs, and adapt to that. Don't go in with an idea and try to
make it fit your audience.
Snell: Historically, early
childhood teachers don't use a lot of technology in the classroom. But I think
they were surprised by the usefulness of apps like Remind and how easy
they were to learn and use."
via mensagem do education week...
