Project EASE Early Access to Success in Education A Parent-Child Program
		Description of Project EASE Overview of the Intervention The four initial goals of the Project EASE program were: all students should have the strongest beginning of their educational career each student will have a plan to meet individual needs parents are integral to the success of the their children early efforts will yield long range success in school Project EASE recognized that meeting those assurances is a complex endeavor, that effective schools do not operate in isolation, and that success requires the combined efforts of both home and school. Literacy development is plays a critical role in assuring academic success and the vision for success cannot be limited to a narrowed view of literacy. Literacy attainment is a complex process which requires the integration of many abilities. Some of those abiities are amenable to classroom instruction, such as phonemic and other print related skills. Other abilities such as language comprehension, receptive and expressive vocabulary, and narrative understanding are artifacts of a more complex set of abilities that are shaped and supported by language opportunities in the home. In recognition of the critical role that parents play in shaping the literacy process, Project EASE has developed an intensive and intentional parent initiative. The parent component includes structured activities that address the critical literacy components of vocabulary development, emergent literacy skills, and narrative understanding. These activities require parents to be highly engaged in their child's literacy development. The activities are designed to foster decontextualized language skills that not only support emerging literate behaviors but rather literacy success in later years. Parents become full and critical partners in the complex task of literacy attainment. They become aware of the distinct ways in which they prepare their children to be competent language partners. They learn how to monitor their children's development in literacy.   Parent Component Parental involvement in the literacy development of their children is the major focus of the EASE program. The parent-child partnership is an at-school and at-home endeavor. The parents are asked to commit to 5 monthly parent education sessions with follow up weekly parent-child activities. Parents are asked to attend parent sessions held at EASE sites and they may have different time options to choose from. For example, morning, afternoon, or evening sessions may be set up to correspond with kindergarten schedules and allow a session for working parents. The sessions begin in October and continue until April. Title I staff facilitates the parent education component and assists in the classroom on the designated EASE days. The parent-child session includes: parent education session modeled activities for parent and child structured weekly activities done at home In addition to the parent-child activities, parents are invited to participate in classroom activities after the parent sessions. The parent-child activities will center on monthly topics which have been shown to influence success in literacy development. The calender of topics are as follows: storybook reading working with words letter recognition and sound awareness retelling family narratives talking about the world These activities increase the decontextualized language opportunities of children which directly relate to reading comprehension. They also help to build beginning print skills in establishing strong letter recognition and sound awareness. The writing activities help in both decontexualized language skills and print skills.