Interactive presentation created to share at local, state and national conferences.
The research regarding the importance of literacy development during the first thousand days is crystal clear:
- Children from lower-income families hear 30 million fewer words than children from higher-income households by the time they are 4 years old.
- The vocabularies of lower-income children are about half the size of higher-income children of the same age.
- Reading aloud to children from birth provides major developmental benefits to children.
- One in six children who are not reading proficiently in the third grade do not graduate from high school on time.
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Key Findings
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Brain Architecture
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Research shows that the environment of a child’s earliest years can have effects that last a lifetime. Between conception and age 3, a child’s brain undergoes an impressive amount of change. At birth, it already has about all of the neurons it will ever have. It doubles in size the first year and by age 3 it has reached 80% of its adult volume.
Some of our little learners experience a tremendous amount of toxic stress before they even learn to walk and talk. These experiences impact not only brain development, but:
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