Whadja Do In School Today?

Every parent of a four or five year old knows the drill. Your child comes home after pre-kindergarten or kindergarten. “Whadja do today?” you  say with eager anticipation, thinking of all the friends your child must have made, the stories your child heard, the songs your child sang, the projects or dress-up or phonics or math, or…well, anything.

“Nuffin,” your child says, wandering out of range to avoid further interrogation.

You know your child did a whole lot more than “nuffin.” But how can you find out so that you can build on what the teacher did each day?

One answer is something our group at the Success for All Foundation created utilizing Investing in Innovation (i3) funding with partners at Sesame Workshop, Sirius Thinking, and Johns Hopkins University. We call it Home Links. Home Links are 10-15 minute videos, akin to short television shows, that parents and children watch together, 4 evenings a week. Each show uses content from Sesame Street and animations we have made with Sirius Thinking, so they are a bit like Sesame Street shows themselves, with one huge difference: the content of the shows reflects the activities that children and teachers were doing that day in school.

The Home Links give kids reinforcement and extension of vocabulary and skills they learned that day, and that’s important. But more important, they tell parents what’s happening in school. When a show contains skits about fall, the letter V, counting to five, and singing traditional songs, the parents know that all of these things are happening in school. Our surveys found that 96% of the time, a parent, grandparent, or other relative watches with the child. At the end of each show there is music and movement, and parents tell us they dance with their children, and they love the closeness and fun. But parents also now know how to support their children’s learning. If the topic is markets, they know to point out interesting things when they next are at the market with their child. If the letter is T, they know to point out things that begin with T. If the math segment is on shapes, parents know to ask children about shapes they see in daily life. Home should not be another classroom, but it’s the ideal place for a child to learn that the things he or she is learning in school are important to his or her parents and exist in his or her community. It also helps children understand that knowing about and learning about those things brings pride and builds curiosity.

Home Links are sent home on DVDs each day. We are now looking for funding to make an online version so families can download Home Links to digital devices such as phones and tablets.

Right now, Home Links are being used in approximately 300 preschool and kindergarten classes already using our proven Success for All whole-school approach. In the future, we hope to disseminate Home Links to preschools and kindergartens whether or not they use Success for All.

When this happens, more and more parents won’t have to ask, “Whadja do in school today?” They’ll know. And they’ll know how to build on what they find out.

And that ain’t nuffin’.

 

The Investing in Innovation (i3) program is a federal competitive grant program at the U.S. Department of Education, within the Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII). It provides funding to support local education agencies or nonprofit organizations in partnership with LEAs and/or schools to expand and develop innovative practices that can serve as models of best practices and to identify and document best practices that can be shared and taken to scale in the areas of improving student achievement or student growth, closing achievement gaps, decreasing dropout rates, increasing high school graduation rates, or increasing college enrollment and completion rates.

More information on the i3 program can be found here.

More information on Success for All Foundation’s grant Around the Corner: A Technology-Enhanced Approach to Early Literacy can be found here.