Get Ready to Read!
Smart Start serves as the home of the Southeast Regional Get Ready to Read! (GRTR!) Center. The center provides and enhances training, screening, and instructional capabilities of early childhood education for child care professionals and parents throughout the state of Georgia in English and Spanish. In partnership with the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD), the Southeast Regional GRTR! Center has introduced the GRTR! program in other states such as North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Alabama.
For over 25 years, NCLD has provided programs and services to increase opportunities for individuals with learning disabilities to succeed in school, work, and life. NCLD focuses on early literacy because up to 80% of the people with learning disabilities struggle with reading. GRTR! is a pre-literacy program designed to help early education and child care professionals, parents, and other caregivers ensure young children are equipped with the fundamental skills necessary for learning to read. The GRTR! program consists of a screening tool, a 20 item research based series of questions designed to gauge a child's grasp of pre-reading skills, and skill building activities. The goal of GRTR! is to screen preschool children for early literacy skills before they enter kindergarten, and based on the results of the screening, use the developed skill building activities to strengthen and ensure their reading success.
GRTR! was piloted in Georgia in 2001 in response to research findings indicating that early screening and intervention are key to promoting reading success and to avoiding many of the academic and emotional problems that go along with them. The program brings easy-to-use information and instructional resources to early childhood educators, child care professionals and parents. The tool was developed by leading researchers in the field of early literacy, Grover J. Whitehurst, Ph.D. and Christopher Lonigan, Ph.D.
GRTR! supports best-practice and research to inform Smart Start's programs and initiatives with five primary principles: quality matters, literacy is key, parent and community engagement makes a difference, public policy must be addressed, and collaborating with partners increases impact. Therefore, the program is embedded in all Smart Start programs - Early Learning Community Based Partnerships (ELCBP), Early Education Substitute Teacher Program (EESTP), Training and Technical Assistance, and Early Reading First (ERF).
Description of Progress:
Since its inception in 2005, the Southeast Regional center has tracked more than 137,000 children screened and more than 11,000 screeners trained in the use of the GRTR! screening tool in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Alabama. To date, GRTR! has a network of 200+ English and Spanish trainers to cover the Southeast region.
Upcoming Events:
2010 GAYC Conference and Training Schedule
GAYC 2010 Trainers Conference:
This full day GAYC Conference is dedicated to providing professional trainers with current research and resources on both early childhood development and adult learning:
June 22, 2010_Registration Form_DULUTH
June 21-25, 2010 - TFT Part I _Registration Form_MACON
June 28-30, 2010 - TFT Part III _Registration Form_ATLANTA
Additional Resources:
Early Learning and Literacy Newsletter - August 2010
Early Learning and Literacy Newsletter - June / July 2010
Early Learning and Literacy Newsletter - May 2010
Early Learning and Literacy Newsletter - April 2010
Early Learning and Literacy Newsletter - March 2010
Early Learning and Literacy Newsletter - February 2010
Early Learning and Literacy Newsletter - January 2010
Early Learning and Literacy Newsletter - December 2009
New GRTR!- Revised Screening Tool published by Pearson Assessment:
• Expanded # of items, with items removed/added during validations
study process
• Target age group is 3 yrs.To 5 yrs.11 mos.
• National norms to include children from all income brackets
• Combined English and Spanish in easy-to-use easel format
• Improved scoring (standard scores, age equivalents and percentiles)
Original GRTR! Screening Tool is still available for free online use
New related items:
• A series of Early Math Matters articles (soon to be published on LD.org)
• GRTR! online training modules (English and Spanish) for parents
and for teachers
• Read Together – Talk Together vignettes about the benefits
of Dialogic Reading with young children
• Seven new articles for parents and early childhood educators highlighting:
reading, writing, language, thinking and learning, numbers and counting,
physical development, and social-emotional
For more information on the GRTR! program, please visit:
http://www.getreadytoread.org/ and http://www.ld.org
For more information about The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), including upcoming events and conferences,
please click link below for NAEYC's E-News for September 2009 @
http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/naeyc/issues/2009-09-09.html
Georgia Public Broadcasting webcasts:
Emergent Writing
GRTR! Screening Tool
Linguistic Awareness
Print Knowledge
Other Sources:
RTI Action Network
Recognition&Response
Reading Is Fundamental (RIF)
EarlyChildhoodNews.com
NAEYC's Right Choice for Kids website