Get Ready For School Program
This literacy program is designed primarily for preschoolers of immigrant families that have the challenges of English as a second language and low or middle socio-economic environments. It also serves disadvantaged children with English as a first language in families with the challenge of a low socio-economic environment. It focuses on early literacy skills (e.g. phonemic awareness, identification of letters and sounds) and school readiness behaviours (e.g. taking turns, learning in a group). Children attend two group sessions per week for 22 weeks.
The program was created by Iuliana Baciu for her PhD thesis at Wilfrid Laurier University. It was piloted in a few community centres from 2004-2008. Children's skills were tested before and after the program and strategies put in place to track the children's later success in school. Iuliana’s research data proves the effectiveness of this program with 3 ½ to 4 year old children.
Strong Start® is now partnering with Iuliana and two community centres in Waterloo Region (Popcorn House and Kingsdale) to take this successful program and develop an infrastructure for replication in other locations.
This program has the potential to be a powerful prevention tool in our community to ensure that more children are ready for the challenges of formal schooling and children of immigrants or low socio-economic families have a chance to start school at the same stage of reading readiness as the majority of their classmates.
This project is funded by the Jim and Sue Hallman Family Fund through the Kitchener and Waterloo Community Foundation and the United Way of Kitchener Waterloo.
Organizations
interested in implementing our programs, please contact us at
or 519-743-9578
