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Join Ken and Michelle as they chat with American Falls School Superintendent, Randy Jensen as he shares two exciting initiatives happening in their community: Universal Preschool and Read-Talk-Play Every Day. Learn how they did it and how you can too.

Read Talk Play Every Day is a research-based, community supported initiative to champion early childhood literacy. Through volunteer, business and family partnerships, parents and relatives are being encouraged to read, talk and play with their children from birth.

“With the help of parents and in partnership with our community our goal is to have every student ready to start kindergarten,” Superintendent Randy Jensen said. “We want every student reading on grade level by the end of third grade and on the path to a happy and successful life.”

Thirty-five percent of students come from poverty households in the American Falls district. Almost 70 percent of elementary students are on free lunch. Research shows students from poverty enter kindergarten, on average, two years behind peers who are not from poverty, due limited exposure to vocabulary. “Less than 20 percent of our kindergarten students come prepared for kindergarten,” Jensen said.

The district is aggressively tackling this challenge through a multifaceted approach involving teacher-designed strategies to address needs in prekindergarten through third grade. During the 2019-2020 school year the school district will be moving to a full day everyday kindergarten program.

“There are many benefits to reading, talking and playing with children,” Jensen wrote in a press release. “Children who have been read to are confident communicators, understand emotions better and form stronger relationships. They have a large and diverse vocabulary: a crucial building block to reading. Children who have been read to have stronger relationships with their parents and feel more connected to their family. Playing with your children fosters imagination and lays a foundation to discovery and a large, descriptive vocabulary. Playing helps your children develop motor skills which improves brain processing skills needed to do math, science and reading. Playing with your children pushes them to invent story lines, characters and places all fundamentals of reading and writing." -From the American Falls School Website

RESOURCES:

American Falls School District:

https://www.sd381.k12.id.us/live-feed#10246902

READ-TALK-PLAY

https://www.sd381.k12.id.us/page/af-read-talk-play

https://unitedwaysei.org/home/our-work/read-talk-play/

ARTICLES:

https://www.newsnationnow.com/top-headlines/ap-top-headlines/ap-idaho-left-early-education-up-to-families-one-town-set-out-to-get-universal-preschool-anyway/

https://idahocoalitionforcommunityschools.org/551-2/

https://www.idahostatejournal.com/news/local/read-talk-play-american-falls-getting-national-attention-for-its-early-childhood-education-success-story/article_36f359b0-7732-11ee-b6c4-eb85ef2bc35d.html

Sponsored by the Idaho Children's Trust Fund
https://idahochildrenstrustfund.org/