Pelletier – personalized alphabet books

And the second was that the program seemed to have specific effects on specific areas of children’s literacy development. So this particular study involved some partners including a children’s television network, and a collaboration with KODAK. So what we were doing was looking at whether children’s personalized alphabet, books as produced by the KODAK collaboration, would have an effect on a particular area of literacy development. Would the television viewing around literacy development have a particular effect on a particular area of literacy development and how would that compare with the larger project. 

So the results were that the alphabet books, the children who participated in the alphabet book intervention showed greater gains in alphabet knowledge—significantly greater gains in alphabet knowledge than the children in the rest of the program., although those children all made gains. But the gains were even greater for the alphabet book intervention. For the television viewing around literacy development, those children made, also made gains in alphabet knowledge. And I’ve neglected to say, in the alphabet book intervention, the gains, in addition to alphabet knowledge, were also conventions of print. So when they were in the book intervention, they were learning about turning the page, they were learning about where the word is and where the picture is, they were learning about book handling skills and about being literate, as well as, they were increasing their alphabet knowledge.  

The idea that the alphabet books were personalized, I think was an important concept. Partly because, in making the books, the children were learning the letter-sound correspondence, in a very natural, fun way, that was so personal and meaningful to them. So, their job, with their parents, was to take disposable cameras donated by the corporate sponsor and to go around their environments, taking pictures of things in their own environment taking pictures of things that began with the sound of the letters of the alphabet. Those pictures were then turned into books that they were so keen to read. So there was a motivation factor, in addition to the actual conceptual piece of learning the letter-sound correspondence. There was a high motivation factor, not only in wanting to look at the books themselves but wanting to share them and read them with other people. And we know the practice in reading makes better reading. So for many reasons, the personalized aspect was very important.  

Yes, I guess they felt, they felt successful as readers and that’s important too. But it’s not that we wanted to trick them into reading, it’s that they truly were able to identify the word but some of the work had come beforehand in sounding out those words when they were taking the pictures themselves. It was all oral. It was hearing the sound of, I’m thinking of gas station, for instance for the letter ‘G’. A little boy wanted to take a picture of a gas station. That was important to him. That was somewhere he went with his parents. And he had to sound that out. He had to know that the letter ‘G’ makes the sound /g/, at least for that particular word: ‘gas station’. So he had already done the work. And now he had his product that he could go around and read to other people and share. And he’s now ready for something more difficult. He could now have a page with two or three words on a page.