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Cassie Pickens
Hamel
CYAF 270
Book Reflection
Meaningful Differences in Every Day Experience of Young American Children
(Todd Risley & Betty Hart)
Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American
Children is a summary and explanation of a research study. This groundbreaking study discovered what is commonly known now as the “word gap”. This word gap is the vocabulary difference between low-income families and higher-income families. Todd Risley and Betty Hart’s study has spawned hundreds of campaigns to try and close this gap and equalize education. Their findings have launched new studies and programs to help “bridge” the gap, even gaining some government attention and funding.
Risley and Hart wanted …show more content…
They observed 42 families in total, leading to over 1,300 observations and almost three years of analysis. They divided the
families up by upper, middle and lower/welfare class. What they found was that by the age of 3, the children of upper class families were speaking about 300 more words per hour than those children of lower socioeconomic status. It is from this data that the term the 30 million word gap was coined. Risley and Hart found that by the age of four, the children in upper socioeconomic families would have experienced an average of 45 million words, whereas a four-year-old in a welfare family would have only experienced an average of only 13 million words. These finding were about to change the world.
Risley and Hart’s results from this study were so astounding that they did a follow up study at age nine to look at the long-term implications of the word gap. What they found was that the word gap was indicative of child outcomes, meaning that there were cast differences in the outcomes of the low word and high word children. Thus the amount of talking that a child experiences, is very important to their outcome. It is very crucial that we give children lots of …show more content…
I personally can really relate with this topic. I have seen children in my classrooms that exhibit traits from both of these sides. I have two little boys in my toddler classroom who both come from high socioeconomic families and they both have extremely expansive vocabularies for two-year-olds. Both of these two years olds will spark up a conversation with you and carry it, they will tell stories and ask questions about things that you say that they don’t know or understand.
Both sets of parents are very social and are constantly talking to them and giving them commentary. They make sure and ask them about their days when they pick them up and point out the things that their teachers report about their day.
One thing that really stands out to me about these two families is the way that they respond when their child gets a bad report. Both of these families use the
Oreo technique when discussing topics that are negative. They make sure and lead with something positive about their day, and then will point out that they see that they had trouble with this particular thing, followed by something good that the child can do to change the action. I think that it is this level of
«
Cassie Pickens
Hamel
CYAF 270
Book Reflection
Meaningful Differences in Every Day Experience of Young American Children
(Todd Risley & Betty Hart)
Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American
Children is a summary and explanation of a research study. This groundbreaking study discovered what is commonly known now as the “word gap”. This word gap is the vocabulary difference between low-income families and higher-income families. Todd Risley and Betty Hart’s study has spawned hundreds of campaigns to try and close this gap and equalize education. Their findings have launched new studies and programs to help “bridge” the gap, even gaining some government attention and funding.
Risley and Hart wanted …show more content…
They observed 42 families in total, leading to over 1,300 observations and almost three years of analysis. They divided the
families up by upper, middle and lower/welfare class. What they found was that by the age of 3, the children of upper class families were speaking about 300 more words per hour than those children of lower socioeconomic status. It is from this data that the term the 30 million word gap was coined. Risley and Hart found that by the age of four, the children in upper socioeconomic families would have experienced an average of 45 million words, whereas a four-year-old in a welfare family would have only experienced an average of only 13 million words. These finding were about to change the world.
Risley and Hart’s results from this study were so astounding that they did a follow up study at age nine to look at the long-term implications of the word gap. What they found was that the word gap was indicative of child outcomes, meaning that there were cast differences in the outcomes of the low word and high word children. Thus the amount of talking that a child experiences, is very important to their outcome. It is very crucial that we give children lots of …show more content…
I personally can really relate with this topic. I have seen children in my classrooms that exhibit traits from both of these sides. I have two little boys in my toddler classroom who both come from high socioeconomic families and they both have extremely expansive vocabularies for two-year-olds. Both of these two years olds will spark up a conversation with you and carry it, they will tell stories and ask questions about things that you say that they don’t know or understand.
Both sets of parents are very social and are constantly talking to them and giving them commentary. They make sure and ask them about their days when they pick them up and point out the things that their teachers report about their day.
One thing that really stands out to me about these two families is the way that they respond when their child gets a bad report. Both of these families use the
Oreo technique when discussing topics that are negative. They make sure and lead with something positive about their day, and then will point out that they see that they had trouble with this particular thing, followed by something good that the child can do to change the action. I think that it is this level of