Involving Parents, Improving Language, Making Books: Using Simple Technology

1
Involving Parents, Improving Language, Making
Books Using Simple Technology

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

Presented at the Division for Early Childhood
Conference October 29, 2008 Minneapolis, MN
2
Project Staff not at DECLori Roggman, Lisa
Boyce, Vonda Norman Jump, Eduardo Ortiz, Cora
Price

• Program Partners
• Up to Three, Logan, UT
• Weber/Morgan Early Intervention Program, Ogden,
  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.

3
For more informationMark.Innocenti_at_usu.edu435-
797-2006This handout will be available at the
websiteEIRI.USU.EDU
4
Red Flags Home Visiting Concerns

• Parents leave the room or go in out during a
  home visit.
• Child races to greet practitioner rummage thru
  bag.
• Practitioner spends more time on family problems
  than on child development.
• Practitioner doesnt expect to get much done
  when other family members are there.
• Practitioner would like to visit the home more
  often so the child gets more services.

5
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 ELLs

6
What are the ELLs?

• SHELLS and UTELL are
• Curricula
• Based on an approach focused on active parent
  engagement
• Promotes childrens
• language (oral language) and
• early literacy
• other skills

7
How do the ELLs accomplish this?

• Through active engagement of the parent and child
  in
• Family storytelling
• Parent-child interaction
• Book making activities

8
Evidence-Base Oral Language Skills

• Two key skills have been research proven to
  increase oral language skills
• Dialogic reading (Whitehurst et al., 1994)
• Shared book reading (Neuman, 1996)
• These skills have been supported by
• What Works Clearinghouse
• National Early Literacy Panel (Shanahan, 2007)

9
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)

10
The key issue is how we implement what we know
from the evidence-base!

• Parent engagement in the process is the key!
• Studies demonstrate successful parent involvement
  (e.g., dialogic reading, shared book reading) but
  how do you maintain parent involvement.
• Home visiting literature suggests weak parent
  involvement.

11
Why do we need new approaches?

• Many types of early intervention rely on parents
• These interventions fail if parents are unengaged
• Parent engagement is challenging (see the red
  flags)

12
Mission and Key Principles for Providing Early
Intervention Services in Natural Environments
KEY PRINCIPLES 1. Infants and toddlers learn
best through everyday experiences and
interactions with familiar people in familiar
contexts. 2. All families, with the necessary
supports and resources, can enhance their
childrens learning and development. 3. The
primary role of a service provider in early
intervention is to work with and support family
members and caregivers in childrens lives. 4.
The early intervention process, from initial
contacts through transition, must be dynamic and
individualized to reflect the childs and family
members preferences, learning styles and
cultural beliefs.
13
Mission and Key Principles for Providing Early
Intervention Services in Natural Environments
KEY PRINCIPLES 5. IFSP outcomes must be
functional and based on childrens and families
needs and family-identified priorities. 6. The
familys priorities, needs and interests are
addressed most appropriately by a primary
provider who represents and receives team and
community support. 7. Interventions with young
children and family members must be based on
explicit principles, validated practices, best
available research, and relevant laws and
regulations.
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
14
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.
15
Why does parent engagement matter?
ELLs for Parent Engagement
parent engagement
Child Outcomes
Parenting Interactions
Parent Engagement Measures
Parenting Interaction Measures
Child Outcomes Measures
16
What is the Theory of Change for ELLs?

• ELLs Process
• Getting parents children talking together.
• Creating meaningful literacy materials.
• Supporting more language literacy.
• Reviewing using regularly.

Parent engagement via book making process
Child development
Parenting Interactions

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

• More language
• supportive strategies
• Support
• Ask
• Expand
• More shared book
• reading

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

17
What are the ELLS objectives?

• What are ELLs activities? Using stories
  photographs of parents children to help
  families make small books to keep.
• Why?
• Increases conversation,
• Increases meaningful literacy materials,
• Increases developmental parenting behavior.

18
Goals of the ELLs Book Making Curricula

• To promote shared conversations around meaningful
  literacy experiences with toddlers with language
  and other delays and their families
• To increase awareness and use of everyday
  activities for language and literacy development
• To use technological supports to promote language
  and emergent literacy

19
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

20
Support for English Language Learners

• What works well for English-speaking children
  will also work for Spanish-speaking children.
• Language development is a key predictor of school
  success.
• For low-income children, comprehensive language
  skills better predictor for reading than
  phonological sensitivity.
• Phonological skills show cross-linguistic
  transfer.
• Several studies have shown that interventions
  supporting Latino families efforts to improve
  their childrens language and literacy skills can
  be effective.

21
Who were we working with (UTELL)?
22
Who were we working with (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.

23
Who were we working with (SHELLS)?

• Families and children (n68) were enrolled in a
  Migrant Head Start program
• Low income (mean 1,900/mo)
• Low maternal education (mean grade 8.3)
• All Spanish speakers as primary language
• Mean child age of 41 months (range of 22 to 60
  months)

24
Who were we working with (SHELLS)?

• Two home visitors provided the SHELLS
  intervention
• Both were experienced home visitors
• Both were native Spanish speakers
• Served three different migrant sites
• Over 5 months the number of home visits varied by
  site
• Site 1 Mean 6.3 (4 to 7)
• Site 2 Mean 6.6 (3 to 8)
• Site 3 Mean 2.8 (1 to 5)

25
What is the Theory of Change for ELLs?

• ELLs Process
• Getting parents children talking together.
• Creating meaningful literacy materials.
• Supporting more language literacy.
• Reviewing using regularly.

Parent engagement via book making process

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

26
UTELL Results Parent Engagement

• Staff remain 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.

27
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.

28
UTELL Result Service Provider Interviews

• Providers indicated that families are 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.

29
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.

30
How did we assess engagement in the SHELLS
intervention?

• Home Visitor Log
• Completed after each home visit
• Home Visit Rating Scales
• Observation ratings on 20 of all families
• Parent Satisfaction with Home Visiting
  Questionnaire
• Completed post-intervention

31
What is the Home Visitor Log?

• Completed by home visitor following the visit
• Provides surface information (date of visit, how
  long, who was involved, what book was made)
• Assesses home visitor perception of parent and
  child engagement in home visit activities
• 5 questions scored on a 5-point Likert scale
• Requires home visitor to
• Reflect on her behavior to facilitate engagement.
• Provide a plan for the next visit
• Log was reviewed by SHELLS supervisor

32
What are the Home Visitor Rating Scales (HOVRS)?

• A measure to describe and evaluate the major
  strategies used in home visiting interventions.
• Developed by Roggman and colleagues (Roggman et
  al., 2001 2006)
• 7 scales rated from 1 to 7 with observable
  behaviors at anchor points (items 1, 3, 5, 7)
• Psychometrically sound
• Inter-rater agreement gt 85, Kappa gt .75
• Scores correlated with home literacy environment
  and child language outcomes

33
How did the SHELLS home visitors do on the HOVRS
(mean scores)?
34
What is the Parent Satisfaction Questionnaire?

• Measure of parent satisfaction with home visitor
  and SHELLS activities.
• 18 items qualitative quantitative information
• Obtained by independent interviewer after the
  last SHELLS home visit

35
Were parents satisfied with SHELLS?
36
Were parents satisfied with SHELLS (contd)?

• she taught me how to help ltchildgt to express
  himself, especially more complex sentences, and
  dedicate time to him so he can express with a
  more clear language.
• I make more questions to my child and then he
  answers more about what he thinks.
• I like that he has his own book and he knows his
  history, he told his dad what he was doing in the
  book.
• Children learned about our roots, where we were
  coming from, and our traditions.
• Child gets sharper, and he is more confident to
  ask and to talk.

72 of parents report using the books gt 2x week
42 report using the books daily or more often
37
What information was provided by our engagement
tools?

• Home Visiting Log
• Verifies the home visit occurred and what
  happened during the visit
• Useful as a home visitor planning tool
• Home Visitor Observation Rating Scale
• Provides independent quality assessment
• Quality was uniformly high in observed visits
• Parent Satisfaction Questionnaire
• Provides quality indicators from the parent
• If they dont like it, they wont do it
• Satisfaction was high and feedback consistent
  with intervention goals

38
What is the Theory of Change for ELLs?

• ELLs Process
• Getting parents children talking together.
• Creating meaningful literacy materials.
• Supporting more language literacy.
• Reviewing using regularly.

Parenting Interactions

• More language
• supportive strategies
• Support
• Ask
• Expand
• More shared book
• reading

39
UTELL Maternal Language Use Outcomes

• 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).
• Open-ended questions were positively related to
  childrens expressive (r .43, p .01) and
  receptive (r .36, p .03) language scores.

40
SHELLS Maternal Language Use Outcomes

• Narrative task
• Increase in eliciting strategies - open-ended
  questions, expansions, confirmation, and
  conversation (p .04)
• Reduction in the number of directives toward
  their children (p .05 )
• Book reading task
• No difference for nagging and simple/complex
  eliciting

41
What is the Theory of Change for ELLs?

• ELLs Process
• Getting parents children talking together.
• Creating meaningful literacy materials.
• Supporting more language literacy.
• Reviewing using regularly.

Child development

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

42
UTELL Results Child Language Scores
ES for Change Receptive .37 (p .08)
Expressive -.14 Mean book making visits
2.4!!!
43
SHELLS Outcome Measures

• No Statistically Significant Differences
• Home Environment (Language/literacy subscale of
  the HOME)
• Child Language (PLS-4)

Mean book making visits 4.6!!!
44
What is the Theory of Change for ELLs?

• ELLs Process
• Getting parents children talking together.
• Creating meaningful literacy materials.
• Supporting more language literacy.
• Reviewing using regularly.

45
Technology Approach

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

46
Process Strategies

• Support parent-child conversations by
• encouraging questions about past experiences,
  open-ended questions, elaboration by asking for
  more information, repeating what the child says,
  and talking about what the child wants to talk
  about.
• referring child to parent, Tell your mom what
  that is.
• referring parent to child, What does he know
  about that?
• making use of evidenced-based strategies (i.e.,
  Dialogic Reading Strategies)
• tailoring strategies to childs developmental
  level

47
Process Strategies (cont.)

• Create individualized, meaningful books by
• following the parent and childs lead
• taking pictures that they want with the digital
  camera
• supporting the parent and child in writing and
  developing the book (it is their creation, not a
  gift from the program)

48
Strategies to Elicit and Expand Child
Conversations When Reading the Book

• Support the childs interests, follow childs
  lead, engage the child, and take turns
• Ask for more information, opinions, feelings, by
  using wh questions such as why, where, how, and
  who.
• Expand on what child says, use new words, bring
  in childs experience.

49
Example Making a Sandwich
50
(No Transcript)
51
Tips

• Not a scrapbook
• Not a communication board
• Tell a story
• Not precious a book to be used by the child
• Align the picture and text like a book

52
Creating Meaningful Literacy Materials

• Identify activity in which child goals can be
  embedded.
• Ask questions that encourage parent-child
  conversation around an interesting topic.
• Illustrate it by taking photos or drawing
  pictures.
• Help write words or sentences from parent-child
  conversations.
• Help organize and put the book together.
• Leave the finished book with the family to keep.

53
Conclusions

• Our Book Making approach adds technology to
  practices well known and accepted
• Natural environments and objects for intervention
• Parent engagement with her child
• Child interest and engagement
• Focus on language and social interaction.
• Results are mixed in our two pilot studies
• The overall process appears solid and can
  identify areas for increased emphasis
• Our Book Making approach appears to be an
  effective way to engage parents in facilitating
  childrens language and emergent literacy skills
• Works for children with disabilities and at-risk
  Latino families

54
Making My Favorite Foods

• This is an example of a book in Spanish, made by
  SHELLS project families.

55
Making My Favorite Food with My Mom and Brother
56
(No Transcript)
57
(No Transcript)
58
(No Transcript)
59
(No Transcript)
60
(No Transcript)
61
(No Transcript)
62
(No Transcript)
63
(No Transcript)
64
(No Transcript)
65
Examples and Research Support for Strategies

• These will be included in our curriculum which is
  currently under development.

66
Parent Strategy Support - Examples
67
Parent Strategy Support Research Rationale
68
Parenting Strategy Ask - Examples
69
Parent Strategy Ask Research Support
70
Parent Strategy Expand - Examples
71
Parent Strategy Expand Research Rationale
72
Examples from the Home Visitor Observation Scales
For more information on these and our approach to
parent engagement see Roggman, L. A., Boyce, L.
K., Innocenti, M. S. (2008). Developmental
Parenting A Guide for Early Childhood
Practitioners. Baltimore, MD Paul H.
Brookes.   Roggman, L. A., Cook, G. A., Jump
Norman, V. K., Christiansen, K., Boyce, L. K.,
Innocenti, M. S. (2008). Home Visit Rating
Scales.  In L. A. Roggman, L. K. Boyce, and M. S.
Innocenti, Developmental Parenting A Guide for
Early Childhood Practitioners (pp. 209-217). 
Baltimore Paul H. Brookes.
73
What is Parent Engagement?
74
Home Visit Rating Scales Curriculum
Implementation
75
Home Visit Rating Scale Parent-Child Interaction
76
Home Visit Rating Scale Child Engagement