Using Simple Technology to Involve Parents, Improve Language, and Make Books

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Using Simple Technology to Involve Parents,
Improve Language, and Make Books

• Mark S. Innocenti
• Early Intervention Research Institute
• Utah State University
• Logan, UT 84322-5680

Presented at the Council for Exceptional
Children Conference April 3, 2009 Seattle, WA
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Project Staff Lisa Boyce, Lori Roggman, Vonda
Norman Jump, Gina Cook, Eduardo Ortiz, Cora
Price

• Program Partners
• Up to Three, Logan, UT
• Weber/Morgan Early Intervention Program, Ogden,
  UT
• Jordan Child Development Center, Salt Lake City,
  UT
• Centro de La Familia, UT
• Funded by
• U. S. Department of Education, OSERS/OSEP.
• U.S Department of Health and Human Services,
  Administration for
• Children, Youth, Families.

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Our approach is from two projects based around a
single logic model

• Storytelling for Home Enrichment of Language and
  Literacy Skills (SHELLS)
• Using Technology to Increase Language and
  Literacy (UTELL)
• For now, referred to as the UTELL

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What is this UTELL all about?

• What are the activities?
• Using stories with photographs of parents
  children to help families make small books to
  keep.
• Why?
• Increases parent-child interactions
• Increases parent and child conversation
• Why are parents so important?

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What helps a child learn to talk read?

• Parent talks Lots of names, labels,
  descriptions, explanations
• Parent child talk together Lots of questions
  conversations
• Family reads Lots of printed materials that
  matter to the family
• Fun Lots of enjoyment around reading and
  talking about experiences and family interests

(Arnold Whitehurst, 1994 Baumwell,
Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, 1997 Caravolas
Bruck, 1993 Carpenter, Nagell, Tomasello,
1998 DeTemple, 1999 Dunham Dunham, 1995
Goldenberg 1987, 1994 Hart Risley, 1995
Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991 Leseman de Jong, 1998
Mason, 1992 Melzi, 2000 Neuman, 1999 Newland
et al., 1998, 2002 Pine et al., 1997 Snow,
1994 Valdez-Menchaca Whitehurst, 1992
Whitehurst Lonigan, 1998.)
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What are you doing to increase these things?

• Parent talks
• Parent child talk together
• Family reads
• Fun

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Mission and Key Principles for Providing Early
Intervention Services in Natural Environments
KEY PRINCIPLES 1. Infants and toddlers learn
best through everyday experiences 2. All
families can enhance their childrens
learning 3. Our primary role is to work with and
support family members
Workgroup on Principles and Practices in Natural
Environments (November, 2007) Mission and
principles for providing services in natural
environments. OSEP TA Community of Practice-Part
C Settings. http//www.nectac.org/topics/families/
families.asp
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Mission and Key Principles for Providing Early
Intervention Services in Natural Environments
KEY PRINCIPLES (Contd.) 4. The early
intervention process must be dynamic and
individualized. 5. IFSP outcomes must be
functional 6. Need team and community
support 7. Interventions must be based on
explicit principles, validated practices, best
available research
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UTELL Objectives

• More
• Parent-child conversations
• Shared book reading
• Language supportive strategies
• Child language

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How will UTELL do this?

• Through parent-child engagement in the process of
  making a book and using it later to support more
  language and literacy.

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What about that evidence base?
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Evidence-Base Oral Language Skills

• Shared book reading/dialogic reading have been
  proven to increase oral language skills
• What Works Clearinghouse
• National Early Literacy Panel (Shanahan, 2007)
• Embedded Instruction/Responsive Teaching works to
  increase language skills (e.g., Girolametto et
  al., 2003 Woods et al., 2004)

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Evidence-Base Oral Language Skills

• Children's and parents personal and situational
  interests (McNaughton, 1995)
• Informal and formal literacy rich environments in
  the childs home using family relevant and
  culturally appropriate materials (Dickinson,
  1994 Dunst Shue, 2005)
• Language and literacy experiences make use of
  family routines and responsive parenting
  strategies (Cairney, 2003)

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The key issue is how do we engage parents
meaningfully in the process?

• Research supports parent involvement
• Field wisdom supports parent involvement.
• Early Intervention literature suggests weak
  parent involvement (Campbell Sawyer, 2007
  McBride Peterson, 1997).

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How were you trained to work with parents of
children with disabilities?

• Typical Special Education training activities
• Focus on providing services directly to children.
• Limited on adult learning, parent-child
  relationships, and coaching.
• Barriers to working effectively with children
  through parents.
• Limited practitioner training
• Lack of parent interest (educationalization)
• Multiple family stressors

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What is Parent Engagement?

• Parent engagement in home visits is high when the
  parent
• remains engaged throughout visit.
• actively participates in activities.
• asks questions or provides information related
  to topic.
• initiates activities discussions.
• enjoys home visits.

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What is the Theory of Change for UTELL?

• Parent actively plans.
• Parent and child interact.
• Parent supports language.
• Parent develops meaningful literacy materials.
• Parent child use regularly.

Process
Parent engagement via book making process
Child development
Parenting Interactions

• Share meaningful talk
• Respond to child
• Print childs words
• Illustrate family stories
• Use strategies books
• afterwards

• More language
• supportive strategies
• More shared book
• reading
• More interactions

• Increased language
• skills
• More spontaneous
• responsive talk
• More use exposure to
• literacy materials

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Lets take a look!
10min video
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What is the research on book making?
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With whom have we worked?

• Children with disabilities in Part C programs
  (UTELL)
• Children from low-income families who are in
  primarily Spanish-speaking homes

Focus on UTELL results.
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Who were the children and families with whom we
worked?

• Children, mostly males (60), were 25 months old
  when we began.
• 21 Intervention 24 Comparison
• Expressive mean age 16 months (5.4)
• Receptive mean age 19 months (8.1)
• Mothers were mostly white, married, middle class
  (35,000/yr) with 13 years of education and
  language skills at a 15th grade equivalent.
• Difference between groups favoring comparison
  mothers.

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With whom were we working (UTELL)?

• Six Part C professionals (4 SLPs, 2 EI) delivered
  the home visits to UTELL families
• Represented staff from 2 programs.
• UTELL families received an average of 2.4
  bookmaking home visits over 6 months.

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UTELL Results Parent Interview Summary

• Parents enjoyed the bookmaking visits (4.5 on a
  5-point scale)
• It was funhave memories and I plan something
  with the children. Girls love the attention of
  the camera. It was fun to see them interacting.
• Parents indicated that the home-made books were
  helpful for their childrens language development
  (4.1 on a 5-point scale).
• Because he was the main character of the book.
  He was in all of the pictures and was making
  the things he liked. He recognizes more words.

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Did maternal interactions with the child show
more language prompting strategies?

• Mothers used significantly more expansions during
  book sharing (p .04)
• Expansions were positively related to childrens
  expressive language (r .41, p .01)
• Mothers significantly increased the number of
  simple wh questions they asked from pretest to
  posttest (p .02).

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Did children improve?

• ANOVA procedures controlling for pretest and
  maternal language scores.
• Receptive language scores were statistically
  significantly different in favor or the UTELL
  group (p .08).
• Effect size of .37
• Expressive language score were not statistically
  significantly different.
• Mean book making visits was 2.4 over 6 months.

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UTELL Result Service Provider Interviews

• Providers indicate that UTELL activities fit into
  their current work (4.4 on a 5-point scale).
• It works for kidsespecially those with speech
  delays. They participate more, talk more, gets
  them to point at things and speak, it gets the
  family involved
• A huge benefit is leaving something concrete and
  familiar with the family. Then parents can see
  how its related to their goals for their
  children and have they have something to work on
  when they are on their own.

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UTELL Result Service Provider Perceptions

• Providers indicated that families were excited
  about making books with their children (4.8 on a
  5-point scale).
• Families start to see the child really use
  books, child says words, child gets more
  comprehension skills, and the parent likes that.
• By the end, theyve all loved it because their
  child likes to look at the books and will talk
  more.

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UTELL Results Service Provider Perception

• Staff remained positive after 12 months of using
  the technology and report high levels of parent
  engagement.
• I have been able to get parents to work with
  their children more on their own. They are
  excited to add to the books and show me what they
  have done.
• The photo books lend themselves to almost any
  goal.

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What do the data tell us?

• Parents liked the intervention and thought it
  helped with language.
• Service providers liked the intervention and
  thought it engaged parents and children.
• Mothers verbal behavior changed during
  intervention.
• Children made modest language gains.
• All this in 6 months with just a few visits

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How do we create meaningful family literacy
materials?
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Technology Approach

• Digital Cameras are used to
• illustrate family stories
• create individualized books
• encourage meaningful literacy experiences
• engage the family in encouraging childrens
  language
• Portable Digital Printers
• Make the process immediate

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Process for creating books

• Plan ahead
• Consider IFSP goals
• Encourage parent-child conversation and interest
• Help illustrate
• Help write captions
• Help organize
• Use the book together with the family
• Leave the finished book

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What about the IFSP goals?

• Process can work with many IFSP goals

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Tips

• Not a scrapbook
• Not a communication board
• Not precious a book to be used by the child
• Tell a story
• Align the picture and text like a book
• 4 or 5 pages is just fine
• 4 to 5 words per page is enough

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• Its not just about the book
• Its about the process!

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• How do we get parents and children talking
  together?

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What gets children talking?

• Support
• Engage child
• Follow childs lead
• Take turns
• Ask
• Use wh questions what, why, where, when, how,
  who
• Ask for more information
• Expand
• Expand on what child says by repeating
• Use new words
• Bring in childs experience

SAE
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Who should use the SAE strategies?

• The parent!!!!
• You need to be the coach.

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How can you coach SAE strategies?

• Say what you see and hear - SWYSH
• Ask for more information - Ask
• Provide information if asked - Inform

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How can you coach SAE strategies?

• Say what you see and hear - SWYSH
• Describe parents SAE strategies
• Describe childs response to SAE strategies

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How can you coach SAE strategies?

• Ask for more information - Ask
• Ask about what you dont see or hear
• Ask when could parent use SAE strategies

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How can you coach SAE strategies?

• Provide information if asked - Inform
• more ideas for SAE strategies
• when relevant or requested

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Using the books

• Observe the parent and child sharing the book.
• Comment on positive interactions
• Comment on Support, Ask, and Expand (S-A-E)
  strategies
• Describe the S-A-E strategies and why they are
  important.
• Ask about the book on later visits
• Encourage frequent and repeated use of the book.

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A Basic Book

• This was developed with a child with disabilities.

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Conclusions

• Our Book Making approach added technology to
  practices well known and accepted
• Natural environments and objects for intervention
• Parent engagement with her child
• Child interest and engagement
• Child language prompting strategies
• Parent engagement in the home visit
• Service providers were positive about the
  interaction and continued doing it.
• Results were promising for children and families
  in early intervention.
• Our Book Making approach appears to be an
  effective way to engage parents in facilitating
  childrens language and emergent literacy skills

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Thank you!For more informationMark.Innocenti_at_u
su.edu435-797-2006
To get the handout, go to http//www.eiri.usu.ed
u/ Click on presentations and publications and
then click on presentations.