September 7, 2007

Professor recruiting volunteers 'Ready to Read' to children

Jennifer Dobbs, an assistant professor in the Department of Child Development and Family Studies, is coordinating Ready to Read. The program is based on dialogic reading, which is a technique that encourages the reader and child to talk while reading, instead of the child just listening.

"When kids play with language they acquire skills that help them learn to be better readers down the road," Dobbs says. "We know this is a successful strategy for parents and teachers, and this will be the first time it's tested with community volunteers."

Volunteers will participate in a single 90-minute training session that shows them how to make reading more conversational. Readers are taught to ask broad, open-ended questions about pictures or books, such as, "What's going on here?" and "What do you see on this page?" The first training sessions are 4:30-6 p.m. Sept. 12 and 10:30 a.m. to noon Sept. 25 at the Elm Room in the West Lafayette Public Library, 208 Columbia St., West Lafayette. The other training sessions are 4:30-6 p.m. the second Wednesday of the month and 10:30 a.m. to noon the fourth Tuesday of the month through December.

Currently, there are more than 100 volunteers reading weekly or monthly to children, ages 3-5, during this year-round program that started in December 2006. The children, who are at three Tippecanoe County Child Care facilities and a Kindercare Learning Center, participate in small, 15-minute reading groups daily. The children at the participating centers represent different races, native languages and family incomes. About 60 children are participating in the program, and Dobbs is recruiting two other sites for the study.

In addition to evaluating literacy, Dobbs is tracking whether reading success correlates with children's behavior.

Dobbs, whose research interest is the connection between children's academic success and their social and emotional development, wants to know how this form of shared-reading affects children's social development. For example, she will look at whether participating children behave more appropriately in class or interact more successfully with their peers.

Ready to Read is funded by the Center for Families in Purdue's Department of Child Development and Family Studies. The Purdue Women's Club also is a supporter, and about 40 of its members volunteer as readers.

For information about volunteering, contact Dobbs at (765) 494-4957, kidsreadytoread@gmail.com.

Media contact: Tanya Brown, (765) 494-2079, tanyabrown@purdue.edu

Source: Jennifer Dobbs, (765) 494-2931, jdobbs@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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