Read and Write Wherever You Are
Every Day Is a Reading and Writing Day provides multiple media resources to build young children’s early literacy skills.
Mississippi's literacy rates continue to be among the nation's lowest, especially in the Mississippi Delta's most rural counties, where as little as half of second graders are proficient in reading. A report from the Mississippi State University's Early Childhood Institute, titled Rural Disparities in Baseline Data of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, shows that these early reading deficits grow more alarming in higher grades. In the state's most rural counties, nearly three-quarters of eighth graders fail to demonstrate reading and language proficiency.
| Little Bird, Grover, Zoe, and Big Bird (Rural Literacy) |
To address this dilemma, the U.S. Department of Education gave Mississippi State's National Center for Rural Early Childhood Learning Initiatives a grant to engage unique programs and strategies that foster children's optimal learning. As part of this project, the university partnered with Sesame Workshop to create Every Day Is a Reading and Writing Day.
The materials in Every Day Is a Reading and Writing Day support and enrich children's early literacy skills, and are built around the idea that a child learns every day and everywhere. Every Day Is a Reading and Writing Day includes a children's DVD of Sesame Street clips, a video for adults that aims to empower parents as their children's first and most important teachers, and a parents' print guide packed with activities and information on how to foster a child's love of talking, reading, and writing.
The online resource gives parents and caregivers tips and activities to help children maximize the learning potential in "regular" daily moments. For example, children can learn:
- New words through listening and talking
- To explore the sounds of language through singing and playing
- To develop a love of books through reading together
- To express thoughts and feelings through scribbling and drawing
- To connect what is said and written through telling and writing stories
The materials show parents that they can help their child develop literacy skills.
"There was a big discrepancy between what should be happening at home and what was happening at home," says Sesame Workshop curriculum specialist Rebecca Honig. "Parents didn't feel empowered to be their child's first teacher. ... Many parents assumed literacy skills would be developed at school. We had to communicate that these were important home activities."
Funding Partner
United States Department of Education
