Grades: Prek-3
Monday-Friday
9/1/08-5/29/09, 9:30-10:00 a.m.
Between The Lions, the award-winning PBS children's series created specifically to improve literacy is built on a strong foundation of evidence-based research about how children learn to read. For students in grades K to 3, Between The Lions systematically addresses the five key areas of instruction in reading: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, Text Comprehension.
According to a University of Kansas study students who watched outperformed students who didn't by 4:1 (50% gains vs. 13%) on skills emphasized in the programs, such as: the ability to match letters with sounds (letter-sound correspondence); the awareness that words are made up of sound units (phonemic awareness); and understanding how print differs from pictures, tracks left to right, etc. (concepts of print).
Kindergarten students who watched outperformed students who didn't watch in identifying letters of the alphabet (20% gains vs. 13%). In the critical skill of matching letters and sounds, kindergarten students who watched Between The Lions improved by 64%, compared to only 25% gains by similar students who didn't watch. Learning was so accelerated that kindergarteners who watched the show exceeded the benchmark set for first-grade students. Kindergarten students who watched Between The Lions outperformed students who didn't view on a standardized reading test (26% gains vs. 5%). Both kindergarten and first-grade students who watched had significantly accelerated rates of growth in the gateway skill of understanding that words are made up of units of sound.
Between The Lions follows a whole-part-whole approach to instruction in early literacy. This approach establishes a meaningful context for learning, and then guides kids to explore specific details such as text structure, individual words, and other print features. Knowledge becomes anchored and accessible, the skills make more sense, and young children understand why they need to practice them.
The whole-part-whole sequence begins with a story, poem, or other form of text that the Lion family reads together. Reading aloud to their children is the most important experience parents can provide to prepare preschoolers for success in school. The Lion family's discussions about the featured stories, word meanings, and real-life connections show viewers how to foster language development and build background knowledge. Often, the read-aloud text is chock full of rhythm and rhyme—designed to trigger phonological awareness. Students can see the words of the text on screen, and a highlighting bar moves across to show that we read from top to bottom and left to right (book and print awareness).
After the read-aloud portion, a Key Word emerges from that text and is examined and compared to other words with similar spelling patterns. The letters and sounds in Key Words take center stage throughout a series of animated, live-action, and puppet-filled sketches. These skill-building segments deliver valuable information to preschoolers and beginning readers, preparing them for kindergarten and the five key areas of instruction in reading. Then the featured letters, sounds, and words are used in context again, by revisiting the original text or in a new example, such as a Cliff Hanger adventure or an easy-reader book read by Arty Smartypants.