Today we will talk again with our friends from the Great Start for Great Futures Coalition about each of our roles in helping the children of Stark County realize their potential for a Great Future. Don’t miss Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 here.

You can find all our Health Matters Podcasts here: iTunes Google Play Stitcher

This installment Jen Griffing and Krista Allison discuss how critical it is for all of us to work together to nurture children in the 2000 days they have before they go to kindergarten.

What is Your Role at Home and in the Community?

It is important for families to understand they have what it takes to be their child’s first and most important teacher.

As a community, understanding that to build strong literacy skills we all need to begin modeling behavior that can nurture our youth. There are a number of ways that you can contribute to the success of children around you by initiating responsive interactions.

Here are 5 elements of responsive interactions:

1. Tuning-In : Tuning in is paying attention to every attempt a child makes to communicate. Eye contact is critical as is waiting and acknowledging sounds, coos and babbles as a young child’s means of communicating along with recognizing how children are moving, responding if they seem unsettled and ensuring they can rest, eat or play in a comfortable way. An ongoing lack of tuning in has been shown to cause a disruption in the developing architecture of a child’s brain. Children CRAVE these positive, responsive interactions and truthfully they are essential for ALL healthy human relationships.

2. Facial Expressions : Using your face to express yourself is another great way to build a relationship and in addition helps children learn what a word means. They will soon learn whether a word is positive or negative, what communicates an emotion or indicates a place or time of day. This all comes together later as children understand the words you are using and can take ownership of those words as their own. A great resource to illustrate how critical facial expressions are to young children is the Still Face Experiment , which you can find online.

3. Touch: Touch is another great way to communicate responsively. Pairing a light touch with talking increases learning as it stimulates multiple pathways in a growing brain to support stronger connections.

4. Gestures: Using gestures, along with words, also helps children understand the meanings of words. In the everyday this might look like, up, under, so big, bye-bye and blowing a kiss.

5. Child-directed Speech: This is the loving, sing-song, high-pitched joyful voice that children love to hear! In child directed speech, you stretch out words and repeat sounds so children start to recognize different sounds and hear the rhythm of language. It's important to note that in this case, we aren’t referring to baby talk, but rather the

What is the State of Ohio Doing?

The state of Ohio has what’s called the Third Grade Reading Guarantee (TGRG). Ohio's Third Grade Reading Guarantee is a program to identify students from kindergarten through grade 3 that are behind in reading. Schools provide help and support to make sure students are on track for reading success by the end of third grade. The point of the guarantee is to ensure a solid literacy foundation is established for each child by the end of the third grade and in many respects become an additional influence in closing the achievement gap.

While we know that there are potentially additional opportunity gaps that may exist to hinder a child’s learning progression, reading closing the reading gap is critical to a child’s life long success because children who start off behind; stay behind. Unfortunately, this trajectory can lead to dropping out of school (signs that are evidenced in the 6th or 9th grade).

What Resources are Available Locally in Stark County?

There is a strong family and community partnership element and that’s where Talk First Stark really comes in to provide support and include all of the adults who impact all of our children.

We believe that awareness + advocacy= advantage.

Awareness, which means not only being aware that we must make an early investment in our youngest citizens AND

we need to Advocate, meaning using our knowledge to act intentionally on their behalf so that they will have every advantage and opportunity afforded to them to create a positive trajectory for success. Which is back to the heart of our coalition, Great Start for Great Futures.

If you are a caregiver or community member and you are interested in learning more or having us come to your location for an awareness or advocacy training, Please visit the Stark Education Partnership’s website and look for the Early Childhood drop down icon for contact information for scheduling a Talk First Stark session.

Talk First Stark is about leveraging the power of language to ensure that all families and community members have the tools they need to nourish the growing brains of our children. We know that whatever your role is, you are a powerful partner in impacting the life of a child. It starts with you. It continues with us.

“We work collaboratively with multiple stakeholders engaging and collaborating with education, business, civic and community stakeholders to drive sustainable improvement and innovation from our youngest citizens to our college and career-minded young adults to ensure life-long success”

— -Krista Allison, Stark Education Partnership

Today we will talk again with our friends, Krista Allison and Jen Griffing from the Great Start for Great Futures Coalition about each of our roles in helping the children of Stark County realize their potential for a Great Future

Evidence indicates that both the quantity and quality of words spoken to a child in the first 3 years of life predict a child's language and emerging literacy skills more strongly than socioeconomic status, parent level of education, and race/ethnicity (Dickinson and Porche, 2011, Hart and Risley, 1995, Hoff, 2003, Hoff, 2013, Hurtado et al., 2008, Huttenlocher et al., 2010, Rowe, 2012, Weisleder and Fernald, 2013).

From a research perspective, we know that the higher the number of words spoken to a child the greater increase in vocabulary development, enhanced language and speech processing, and improved literacy outcomes. (Hoff and Naigles, 2002, Hurtado et al., 2008, Huttenlocher et al., 1991, Weisleder and Fernald, 2013, Zimmerman et al., 2009).

What that means from a practical perspective is that our relationships and the ways we interact with children are the necessary foundation for language development.  Parents and family members can develop meaningful context that others cannot.  They know cries, facial expressions, interests and behaviors, and how their children communicate their needs...and of course their wants!

It may sound simple, but the most important way to help children develop language is to build relationships! We know that children are practicing to respond before we can actually see and hear them responding.  So, responsive interactions, back and forth turn taking while talking, are the best way to enhance your relationships with children, while at the same time building their language foundation.

Some of these strategies are very natural and are not even related to WHAT we say but HOW we say it. Again, these tips are free. They don’t require any special planning or materials and can be done anytime or anywhere.

 Here are 5 elements of responsive interactions:

 1. Tuning-In: Tuning in is paying attention to every attempt a child makes to communicate. Eye contact is critical as is waiting and acknowledging sounds, coos and babbles as a young child’s means of communicating along with recognizing how children are moving, responding if they seem unsettled and ensuring they can rest, eat or play in a comfortable way. An ongoing lack of tuning in has been shown to cause a disruption in the developing architecture of a child’s brain. Children CRAVE these positive, responsive interactions and truthfully they are essential for ALL healthy human relationships.

 2. Facial Expressions: Using your face to express yourself is another great way to build a relationship and in addition helps children learn what a word means. They will soon learn whether a word is positive or negative, what communicates an emotion or indicates a place or time of day. This all comes together later as children understand the words you are using and can take ownership of those words as their own. A great resource to illustrate how critical facial expressions are to young children is the Still Face Experiment, which you can find online.

 3. Touch: Touch is another great way to communicate responsively. Pairing a light touch with talking increases learning as it stimulates multiple pathways in a growing brain to support stronger connections.

 4. Gestures: Using gestures, along with words, also helps children understand the meanings of words. In the everyday this might look like, up, under, so big, bye-bye and blowing a kiss.

 5. Child-directed Speech: This is the loving, sing-song, high-pitched joyful voice that children love to hear! In child directed speech, you stretch out words and repeat sounds so children start to recognize different sounds and hear the rhythm of language. It's important to note that in this case, we aren’t referring to baby talk, but rather the way we say real words to get high engagement from a young child, using the speed and tones of our voice.

We always like to encourage the idea of “Strive for 5,” that being 5 back and forth responsive interactions.  When you have at least 5 serve and returns in your conversation “my turn, your turn.”

“Serve and Return” is back-and-forth communication, or adult speech followed by a child's vocalization within 5 seconds or vice versa. Conversational turns invite children into the conversation regardless of whether they are able to communicate verbally or through nonverbal signals and provide children with the opportunity to build their communication skills in the context of an engaged social relationship (Kuhl, 2007, Zimmerman et al., 2009)]

The brain has the opportunity to be nourished with language and to develop those critical patterns and pathways. It gives you both quantity and quality of words all while growing your relationship as well!

The last strategy around the 5 pertains to the 5 senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch)

 Our five senses are a powerful tool in helping us learn about the world around us.  As we experience our environments, we can use what we see, smell, hear, touch and taste to give our children lots of words to build their vocabulary and grow strong brain connections.

If we use our 5 senses to enhance our language experience and nourish the relationship and responsive interactions within a group it will make those connections even stronger.

Don’t miss Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4 here.

You can find all our Health Matters Podcasts here: iTunes Google Play Stitcher 

This installment of Health Matters will talk with our friends from the Great Start for Great Futures Coalition about each of our roles in helping the children of Stark County realize their potential for a Great Future. We welcome Jen Griffing and Krista Allison to share their passion and vision for the youth in our community.

Talk First Stark - is a Stark County strategy geared towards families with children from prenatal to age 3. The initiative promotes the importance of language nutrition as the foundation for healthy growth during this critical time in a child's brain development. Progress made during the first 5 years of a child’s life is extremely predictive of future school successes and struggles. Kindergarten readiness predicts 3rd grade reading achievement, which predicts 8th grade math achievement, which predicts high school graduation, which predicts postsecondary attainment.

For more information about Talk First Stark visit http://www.edpartner.org

This is part of a series of four programs. Don’t miss Part 2, and Part 3 and Part 4 here.

You can find all our Health Matters Podcasts here: iTunes Google Play Stitcher