Ready for School, Ready for Life promotes early childhood literacy
The challenge
Did you know that the first 2,000 days of a child’s life – from birth to kindergarten – are the most critical to emotional, physical and mental well-being? During this time, more than one million new neural connections form in the brain every second.
When a student begins kindergarten, their level of readiness not only affects their development as a whole, but their future academic and personal success as well. But unequal opportunities in communities around the country leave some kids feeling ready and others behind before they even start school. That’s why Ready for School, Ready for Life – a connected, innovative early childhood system of care – was created, to better support Guilford County’s youngest children and ensure their kindergarten readiness.
The solution
Image provided by Ready for School, Ready for Life
Ready for School, Ready for Life, or “Ready Ready,” aims to help families support literacy and language development during a child’s earliest years. Their vision is to create a system that enables every child born in Guilford County from 2021 on to enter kindergarten developmentally on track.
Funding from Ready Ready’s partners, like International Paper’s, moves Ready Ready further toward its goal of ensuring Guilford County students can read on grade level by third grade. This critical funding also supports the continued implementation of early literacy strategies for toddlers and preschool aged children. An essential aspect of this early literacy support is ensuring that community families have access to books.
Thanks to recent grant funding from Coaching for Literacy’s #Fight4Literacy game at North Carolina A&T State University, 2,000 books were distributed to preschool aged children in Guilford County, increasing the community’s access to literary resources. In conjunction with the books, active reading training was provided to the children’s parents or caregivers.
The testimony
Shelli Scott of Greensboro Parks and Recreation is a partner of Ready Ready’s work to share literacy skills and information with the community. Scott explains how what she’s learned from Ready Ready will help her strengthen the activities she offers to young children through Greensboro Parks and Recreation.
“The active reading training provided to me by Ready for School, Ready for Life helped me to understand how to activate a child’s imagination during story time,” noted Scott. “When using active reading techniques, we are doing more than simply reading a book to a child, we are developing within them an affinity for the arts and an increase in language skills.”
Through this grant partnership, Coaching for Literacy and Ready Ready are improving the early literacy skills for thousands of children, leading the Guilford community toward a population-level change.
You can #Fight4Literacy.
Illiteracy impacts every community – it is critical that we all join together to help children locally and around the country. Consider donating to Coaching for Literacy or participating in an upcoming #Fight4Literacy Game. Share this message with your friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, and follow Coaching for Literacy for information about upcoming events and the fight against illiteracy. We look forward to having you on our team.
