Vermont Business Magazine The Stern Center for Language and Learning recently received a grant from the Windham Foundation to bring their BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LITERACY© (Building Blocks) training to the southern Windsor and northern Windham counties of Vermont. The $6,000 grant will be used to provide professional learning and materials to early care and education providers and pre-K teachers to foster early literacy skills in children. This training will be delivered through a 6-hour live training onSaturday, April 30in the Springfield area and a follow-up 12-hour online course.
Derived from National Research Council (1998) and National Early Literacy Panel (2009) recommendations, Building Blocks aims to help implement research-based and research- proven strategies through play into preschool and childcare settings. The overall objective of the project is to support language and literacy development in Windham Northeast preschool children to ensure that children have the foundational literacy skills to learn to read and be able to meet the expectations of the Kindergarten Common Core State Standards.
For years, studies have shown that children lacking the preliteracy skills needed for successful reading development show significant delays in their reading progress. Consequently, if these delays are not addressed and children are reading poorly by the end of first grade, they will continue to read poorly by the end of fourth grade, further increasing the likelihood that they will have reading difficulties for the rest of their lives.
Since its founding in 1963, the Windham Foundation has awarded more than $10 million in grants to non-profit organizations, such as the Stern Center, that align with their mission of "promoting Vermont's rural communities.” The impact this grant will make is significant because it enables the Stern Center to empower educators with the knowledge to prevent reading failure among Vermont’s youth and dramatically increase their potential for success in school and quality of life as well as future educational and occupational opportunities.