A Community Literacy Partnership: The Museum Without Walls Literacy Project

1. A Community Literacy Partnership: The Museum Without Walls Literacy Project Addie Lafferty and M. Jeanne Wilcox Infant Child Research Programs Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona

2. The Museum Without Walls Literacy Project • Collaboration between the Phoenix Public Library, the Phoenix Family Museum, and a local early intervention service agency. • Funded by a Coca Cola Reading Is Fundamental Ingenuity Grant. • Designed to create a unique and educational learning environment for parents, children and teachers in Head Start programs. • Focused on promoting education about emergent literacy skills and community resources.

3. Purpose To explore: • Teacher’s beliefs about and use of literacy activities in the classroom. • Parent’s beliefs about and use of literacy activities at home. • Parents’ and teachers’ use of local libraries. • Areas in which parents and teachers wanted more information. • Children’s favorite activities from the bus visit.

4. The Bus Exhibit • A city bus was converted to hold a traveling museum exhibit. • 4 literacy-based activities were added to the bus as part of the permanent collection. • Activities targeted print awareness, alphabet knowledge, narrative development, and vocabulary development.

5. Bus Activities • Pre-visit packets were distributed to teachers with literacy activity ideas and explanations of emergent literacy domains. • 10 bus visits to local elementary schools were made from February-April 2004. • Participants roamed through the bus exhibit and participated in various activities over a 1 ½ hour time period.

6. Characteristics of Participants Participants: • 26 Head Start classrooms • 5 Infant & Toddler Head Start Playgroups • Approximately 420 children and families • Approximately 62 teachers and paraprofessionals • Demographics: 64% Latino, 25% Caucasian, 5% African-American, 3% Native American, and 2% Asian or Pacific Islander

7. Self-knowledge Assessment Questionnaire For Parents and Teachers • Developed to examine parents & teachers use of literacy activities and beliefs about the importance of specific literacy activities. • Two different versions of the questionnaire were created, one for parents and one for teachers. • An English version and a Spanish translation allowed for representation of both language users predominant among this group of participants.

8. Subscales of the Questionnaires Activities Subscale • 22 questions for parents and 27 questions for teachers. • Asked parents and teachers to rate their use of literacy activities on a Likert-like scale with 1=very little to 5=very often. • Examples of these activities included playing rhyming games, reading stories aloud, and talking about new words while reading. Beliefs Subscale • 11 questions for both teachers and parents • Asked parents and teachers to rate their beliefs about the importance of literacy activities on a Likert-like scale with 1=not important at all to 5=essential. • Examples of these beliefs included having a variety of books available at home/school, having opportunities to practice writing, and requesting to be read to. • Also included open-ended questions about whether or not participants had a library card, how often they visited the library, and areas in which they would like more information or training about early literacy skills.

9. Reliability of the Questionnaire Reliability Analysis: • For parents, Cronbach’s alpha was .925 (n=268) on the activities subscale and .930 (n=310) on the beliefs subscale. • For teachers, Cronbach’s alpha was .923 (n=36) on activities subscale and .939 (n=33) on the beliefs subscale. • Reliability coefficients above .80 are considered to be strong, and based on this standard the questionnaire was determined to be reliable across all participants.

10. Parent Survey Results Mean of the activities subscale at was 3.54 (n=334). • This indicates that overall, parents rated their use of literacy activities with their children as between “sometimes” and “often” according to the scale. Mean of the beliefs subscale was 4.10 (n=82) • This indicates that parents rated their beliefs about the importance of specific literacy activities as between “very important” and “essential” according to the scale.

11. Areas Parents Wanted More Information About

12. Parents Frequency of Library Visits

13. Teacher Survey Results Mean of the activities subscale was 3.89 (n=36). • This indicates that overall, teachers rated their use of specific literacy activities in the classrooms as between “sometimes” and “often” according to the scale. Mean of the beliefs subscale was 4.6 (n=9). • This indicates that teachers rated their beliefs about the importance of specific literacy activities as between “very important” and “essential” according to the scale.

14. Areas Teachers Wanted More Information About

15. Teachers Frequency of Library Visits

16. Children’s Favorite Activities on the Bus

17. What We Learned From the Children • Children preferred literacy activities that incorporated music, movement, and story telling props. • 224 children received new public library cards as a result of this project.

18. What We Learned From the Teachers • Although teachers reported moderate to high levels of literacy activity use in their classrooms, many reported they did not know why certain activities were important or which emergent literacy domain they fell in. • Teachers reported the pre-bus visit packet helped explain the domains of emergent literacy and gave them ideas of activities to facilitate development. • Most teachers reported they visited the library 1-3 times a month. • Teachers reported they wanted more information about all areas of literacy development, especially dual language strategies, resources for activities and phonological awareness skills.

19. What We Learned From the Parents • Parents reported they wanted more information on everything about literacy, especially reading & writing development and alphabet skills. • Most parents reported they visited the library rarely or never. • Most parents did not know the libraries had materials in Spanish. • Many parents thought there was a charge to obtain a library card or use the library.

20. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Southwest Human Development, the Phoenix Family Museum, and the Phoenix Public Library for allowing us to be a part of this project.