What is the Online Road to Reading? It's our new LSTA grant project!
Here's a description of the project from our grant application.
Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy (CLEL), in partnership with Rocky Mountain Public Broadcasting Services (RMPBS), will expand early literacy storytime expertise for Colorado library staff, parents, and childcare givers by creating an "Online Road to Reading," an online video resource. CLEL and RMPBS will produce sixteen literacy-based storytime video clips as well as a website and instructional webinars to support public library staff, parents and child care providers.
The Online Road to Reading website will display video clips of 30 - 60 seconds that model songs, rhymes, and fingerplays appropriate for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. Each clip will include helpful early literacy tips to increase the understanding of child development and pre-literacy needs. The literacy tips and skills follow the Public Library Association (PLA) and the Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC) Every Child Ready to Read (ECRR) research-based program of early literacy in public libraries. The songs, rhymes, and fingerplays can be used by library staff to engage young children and to help staff incorporate research-proven early literacy techniques into storytimes. To support the CLEL Online Road to Reading, Rocky Mountain PBS will host the videos on their server and provide another conduit for parents to access the video clips.
Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy (CLEL) is a collaboration of over thirty public libraries and other interested parties who believe that all children deserve the joy of reading and the skills in life that literacy brings. CLEL is passionately committed to strengthening children's literacy through library services and community advocacy.
Last year, CLEL received a Library Services and Technology (LSTA) grant to provide training, mentoring, and materials for ten rural Colorado libraries. The training and mentoring assisted library staff with incorporating ECRR principles, materials, and techniques into their storytime programming. CLEL members are experts in ECRR techniques and training and provide workshops for library staff, parents, and childcare givers throughout Colorado.
The experienced CLEL members seek to continue to demonstrate early literacy storytime components with these engaging video clips while providing fun songs, rhymes, and fingerplays for library staff, parents, and childcare givers. The Public Library Association uses this quote to emphasize that parents are their child's first teacher: "Early Literacy begins with you... you can help your child be ready to read."