Build Better Brains for Literacy Success
Two Resources Tell How Shaping Early Experiences Can Help ALL Children Succeed
Helping ALL children learn to read well and independently means starting early to promote two critical areas
in a child’s development: vocabulary and brain development. Here are two resources that can help parents,
educators, and policymakers understand what research says about these two powerful influences.
Building Children’s Brains
 The Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health (MI-AIMH) released a compact disk called Building Children’s Brains in 2003 to educate policymakers, business leaders, communities, and parents about the importance of
investing time and resources in supporting young children. The CD features Dr. Joan Lessen-Firestone, Director of Early Childhood at Oakland Schools. Dr. Lessen-Firestone provides listeners with an easy-to-understand presentation on how
the brain of a young child works and grows.
“Almost 80 percent of our knowledge about the brain has been developed during the last five years,” Lessen-Firestone says in the CD’s 20-minute narrative. She goes on to describe how the combination of love, caring, touch, play, nutrition, singing, talking, and reading support the development of a child’s brain, emotional security, and capacity to learn.
To order a copy of Building Children’s Brains, visit www.mi-aimh.msu.edu or call (734) 287-1700.
 Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children
by Betty Hart & Todd R. Risley. Paul H. Brookes Publishing, 2003 (4th printing). ISBN 1-55766-197-9
Researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley wanted to know why, despite best efforts in preschool programs to give children equal opportunity to learn, children from low-income homes remain well behind their more economically advantaged peers years later in school. Their research study, described in their book Meaningful Differences, reveals that one reason is the staggering differences in the number and variety of words children hear and use during their preschool years. This is important because Hart and Risley’s follow-up studies of children at age nine show that the
large differences they found in the amount of children’s language experience were tightly linked to large differences in child outcomes. They
conclude, in their preface of the 2002 printing of the book, “The most important aspect to evaluate in child care settings for very young children
is the amount of talk actually going on, moment by moment, between children and their caregivers.”
“By the time children enter kindergarten, a great deal
of the emotional and intellectual wiring of
their brains has been set. Whether children are on a path leading to academic success
and positive social behavior or to school failure and
violence is determined largely by the manner in which
this wiring has occurred. For the first time, we now
understand how and why [these outcomes] happen.”
Dr. Joan Lessen-Firestone, in Building Children’s Brains
Governor Embraces R.E.A.D.Y. Program
Updated R.E.A.D.Y Kits Have a New
Look and Even More Resources
Since 1998, the award-winning Read, Educate and Develop Youth (R.E.A.D.Y.) kits have helped more than 630,000 Michigan parents and caregivers give their children a head start on the path to reading
and writing. The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) teamed up with early childhood and literacy experts to launch the award-winning R.E.A.D.Y.
program in 1998. This year, Governor Jennifer M. Granholm has updated the infant kits to include more child health, safety, and nutrition information to become a comprehensive “early childhood development” kit that focuses on “the whole child.” A limited number of kits will be distributed free to Medicaid-eligible families and first-time parents.
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