Read, Talk, Play initiative unveiled in American Falls

The American Falls School District has unveiled a new initiative to help prepare kids for kindergarten. But the plan doesn’t just impact early education, it will actually impact each stage of learning, all the way up to college.

“We really want parents to start read, talk and playing from birth to until they go to school,” American Falls Superintendent Randy Jensen explained. “But actually it doesn’t stop then. We want them to continue to do that while kids are in school as well.”

The Read, Talk, Play initiative was unveiled at the beginning of March and is aimed at preparing more students to enter the school system.

District-wide, 35 percent of students come from homes of poverty. Research shows that students of poverty enter kindergarten, on average, two years behind their peers due to limited exposure to vocabulary.

“We only have about 20 percent of our students come kindergarten ready,” Jensen said. “We felt that we really needed to have a push to encourage our pre-k parents to spend time read, talk and playing with their kids.”

Jensen continued by saying, “when you look at the research, there’s just so much research that shows how important it is to do all three. Not just to read but to talk and to play.”

In class Monday, many students were eager to get up and put their reading skills to the test on the Dr. Seuss classic ‘Oh the places you’ll go.

According to Jensen, improving student vocabulary is one of the biggest targets of the initiative.

“Students that have a richer vocabulary just do better in school, they do better on standardized tests, they do better on college entrance exams,” Jensen said.

“By doing this, students will develop a stronger and more rich vocabulary, which really pays big dividends later on in their education.”

A community-wide effort, several local businesses and groups are supporting the district.

A grant from Kids Read Now is being supported by United Way of Southeastern Idaho that will allow students to build a small collection of up to ten of their own books.

“Our kids will get four books of their choice in May and then each time they read one of those books and do a little report on the computer kids read now will mail them another book,” Jensen said.

Even in a short time, Jensen believes the district could see drastic changes in preparedness.

“I think we could see a huge increase. You know, if we get parents starting to do that right away, even those students who are going into kindergarten next year, they’ll have four or five more months of read, talk and play than they would have had,” he said.